The Sum of Us
by Pace is the trick
Summary: Drabbles written for Shells on the natures of Ivo, Tim, and Danny
1. Chapter 1

_**The Perfect Storm**_

I had imagined naturalists would be serene - the types who wore hemp clothing, went barefoot and napped in grassy fields. I imagined they were harmonious _equanimous _individuals. Such are the musings of a city boy.

John Muir once wrote, "A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship." And so it was with Ivo. Unleashed he was tempestuous, a perfect storm. He was violent and unpredictable, destructive and relentless, a hurricane and a tornado and an avalanche all at once. And not one hour later he would be calm and collected, lying peacefully on the sofa reading his favorite poet, sucking on the remaining ice cubes in his glass on a hot summer's day.

I suppose there are those who might call him "bi-polar" or whatever the word of the day is. But I know Ivo. I know that he is _natural_, a naturalist, tuned in to the great mysteries of the earth. For Muir also wrote, "But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease."


	2. Chapter 2

_**Birthdays and such**_

The day I turned 22 Ivo was still in Alaska and I was stuck in Aldeburgh. Aunt Clarissa bought me a sugary white cake and a ghastly sweater and spent the day talking with my mum about how horrible the world was. The only thing she asked me was what I intended to do with an English degree.

Ivo sent me American chocolate, a poem composed the night before in drunken euphoria (noteworthy more for the hilarious scribal errors than the incoherent declarations of what I am certain he meant as love but came across as pornographic innuendoes), and a series of his own drawings he thought might entertain me. Like many in his profession, he had learned to sketch over the years, puzzling over what form a given fossilized bone or scale might take in artistic reconstruction. The prehistoric world, he once told me, was all very Dr. Seuss. One merely had to have a little imagination and there was no telling what might have been. From the fossilized remains of a single jaw bone he would recreate the animal. And so I was treated to Epidexipteryx and Epidendrosaurus and Deinocheirus and one I was certain he made up, Opabinia. ("I am not making it up!" he protested in his letter, knowing full well what my reaction would be.)

He wrote of his latest escapades - of nearly killing a dozen tourists when the raft capsized because he had been distracted watching an unusual variant of the common loon; of literally missing the boat and having to be taken on the outboard to catch up with it; of joining the polar bear club and determining that no amount of scotch could make swimming in sub-freezing temperatures worthwhile ("I shall return to you a lesser man. You can imagine what I mean...". His testicles, he lamented, were simply no more.)

He was off the following day to see his sister and brother-in-law in Vancouver and then would head south to Seattle to meet up with an old friend who now taught at the University of Washington before heading out again for two weeks in the Inside Passage, his favorite part of the summer. The midnight sun would be out on June 21st and while the tourists would be off playing midnight golf or watching midnight basketball or simply doing the midnight drinking thing, he intended to be alone on Chenga Island where he could best observe the sky. However, he noted - and I could hear the ache in his penmanship - no sun could brighten his life as I did and he would give anything to be with me on my birthday.

That was the closest anyone had ever come to saying they loved me. I lay down on my bed and cried myself to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_**The Beach Below**_

"I'm leaving you." I said it robotically, I'd been rehearsing it for so long. "When we get off the ship on Friday, I am leaving you. It's all over."

He turned his head. "_**What**__?"_

"I'm leaving you. This is the end. I don't want to be with you anymore."

His face registered the blow. He was white, stunned, unable to orient himself. "Look at me," he said quietly after a minute.

I did. I could hardly look away, I was appalled by his face. He looked like a cadaver.

"I'm not hearing this. You didn't say it." He took hold of both my arms, challenging me to defy him. His fingers dug painfully into me.

"Please," I said. "Not here. People will see us."

"Do you think I care what people think?"

"Let's go somewhere and talk," I urged. I didn't want to make a scene. I didn't want people to think Ivo and I had a relationship, that I had had a relationship with a man.

He followed me away from the shore. We climbed the path in silence until we were well out of sight, high up on the cliff.

"Why did you say what you did?" he demanded.

"It's true," I felt my courage ebbing. "I've thought about it a lot. I am leaving you."

"What's brought this on?" He was genuinely confused.

I couldn't reply.

"Answer me!" he commanded. "Why the sudden change? Do you no longer love me?"

I wanted to tell him but my heart was pounding and I couldn't catch my breath.

"I see," he said quietly. "You never loved me."

"Must we dissect everything?" I managed.

"Yes. I asked you why you ceased to love me and you told me, not in words but with your expression, that you had never loved me. So I have to wonder about your behaviour these past two years. Why did you touch me that first day? And then come to my office, to my house? Why did you say you wanted to be mine and only mine? Was this all a game to you?"

"I don't know," I said miserably.

"You don't know why you threw yourself into a love affair that you apparently weren't interested in in the first place?"

"I - " I would have just repeated my 'I-don't-know" if I had finished the sentence. Instead I stared at the ocean, thinking whimsically that Ivo was right, that this was someplace I would want to return to time and again.

He sighed and appeared to reflect on my apparent confusion. And then he asked abruptly, "Have you got a new lover?"

I decided honesty was the best way to get a clean break. "Yes."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Not 'him'. Her." I needed to make certain he understood that I was not like him, I wasn't gay and wouldn't have a relationship with another man.

" 'Her'?" he repeated with an ugly laugh. I thought he was sneering at me again for wanting women. "Another one of your flings? Another Emily or Suzanne?"

"No," I said coldly. "It's someone I love. It's not a fling at all. I haven't even slept with her. But I love her. And I am going to be with her."

"Really?" He paused to light a cigarette and though his hands were steady, I knew he was shaking inwardly. It was a sure sign of stress. He never smoked when he was happy. "Does she know about me?"

"No!" I was horrified by the very thought. Dear God, what if Isabel found out about Ivo. What would she think of me?

"Where did you meet her? I can't imagine it's one of the charming ladies on board. Or is it perhaps the scullery maid? That would be to your liking, eh?" And he laughed unpleasantly again, exhaling a large amount of smoke.

"Of course not." Why did he always insult me when things didn't go his way? He would flare up and then apologize for overreacting. I was sick of it.

"Then - " An odd gleam came into his eyes. Most people's eyes are opaque. Not Ivo's. You could tell exactly what he was thinking when he looked at you. "In Juneau? When you were there alone?"

"Yes," I said defiantly.

"What's her name?" His mouth was hanging slightly open, as if he were on the verge of racous laughter.

"Does it matter?" I was exasperated. I wanted him to just let me go.

"Yes. It does. You are leaving me for someone you say is your true love. I have a right to know."

"Ivo, just let me go. I don't want to be with you. Isn't that enough? I don't want you!" I hated pleading but that was where this had brought us.

"She lives in Juneau?" He continued his line of questioning.

"No," I said wearily. Did it really matter where she lived? I was too tired to be suspicious at that point.

"Where then?"

"Vancouver." I don't know why I told the truth. I guess because I felt if I lied my situation would get even worse, he'd catch me lying and trap me and I wouldn't be able to get away.

"Vancouver," he repeated smoothly and he looked positively evil to me then. I shivered in fear. For the first time, I was genuinely afraid of him. "And, pray, how are you going to get to Vancouver?"

I was stumped again. "You have my ticket - " I began to argue. He did have the tickets, all of them – to Seattle and San Francisco and Vancouver, all of the places we intended to go. But of course that was based on the assumption that I was traveling with him. Too late did I learn the dangers of allowing oneself to be financially dependent on another. "Ivo, you promised - " I sputtered angrily, realizing finally what he was doing.

"No, I promised nothing of the sort. I pay your way in all things as usual when you are with me. That is one of the many perks of having me as your lover. I wonder if your latest infatuation can provide you with as much. Or perhaps you intend to support her?" And he laughed again.

I hated him so much then. I wanted to rush at him and strike him, claw him until he bled, shove him off the cliff and watch him drown.

"So tell me all about your beloved Isabel," he said coolly, leaning back against the jagged rock, making himself comfortable. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

I almost fell into the trap. I almost opened my mouth to say that she was good and pure and he had no right to bring his filthy habits to bear in a love like mine for her. But the name brought me back to reality with a nasty jolt. He had said her name. Isabel.

"How - " I swallowed hard. How could he possibly have known about her? He had been on the boat. He had been no where near us. Had he come back when I was I with her? Had I said her name in my sleep? I hadn't slept in his presence since we left Juneau. "You spied on me!" I screamed, arriving at the logical conclusion, no longer caring who heard us. He'd done it before – in Warwick, when he travelled and worried that I would go out and fuck anything that moved. But the idea that he had had someone spy on me in Juneau was too much. It was a gross violation of my rights. Worse still was the growing fear that if he knew about Isabel, he could _would_ expose me to her. He'd follow me to Vancouver and tell her about what we had done together. That Isabel could learn of my sordid past...

"Oh, no," his smile broadened, hateful and cold. "I wasn't spying on you. She was."

"What?" I was lost in the exchange. He had the upper hand again, knowing something that I did not.

"Isabel spied on you," he said sweetly. "Oh, didn't she mention that? Probably not. She would have worried about your well-being. You have such a delicate ego. She's my sister, you see. Married to Kit Winwood. Isabel Steadman-Winwood. I guess you never got around to that part of the conversation either, her being married. But we are twins. Surely you must have seen the resemblance. Everyone says we are just alike."

When I was a child I once fell out of a very tall tree in a neighbor's garden. No one was there to help me and I lay for what seemed like an eternity on the ground - wounded, crippled, unable to breathe, very conscious of what was happening to me and completely unable to help myself. Standing across from Ivo now, that same feeling came back to me. I knew what he said was true but somehow I couldn't accept it. It was impossible. And yet looking at him, I saw Isabel's face and realized they were one and the same.

"She sent me a series of very amusing letters regarding your antics those two weeks. Ah, and yes, she did say you professed your love for her. She was quite embarrassed and asked how she should respond. I told her not to worry about it, that it was in character for you to imagine yourself in love with anyone who breathed and that it would pass soon enough. Still, it was quite an eye-opener for me. Would you like to read my sister's letters about you?" There was a mocking light in his eyes.

I felt the ground move beneath my feet. A dizzy disorienting, shell-shocked feeling overwhelmed me and I knew instinctively rather than consciously that I was about to pass out. I heard Ivo call my name as if from inside a very deep well, sensed that he was moving towards me. I couldn't stand the thought of him touching me. I didn't ever want to see him again. I didn't want to see anyone again. Isabel's betrayal - and she had betrayed me as surely as if I had been the Christ and she Judas - had wrenched my guts from me, leaving me hollow, empty of any emotion save one: despair. I couldn't breathe, couldn't find my footing. I knew I was lost. I had to escape while I still could. I did the only thing I could think of.

I turned and flung myself off the cliff. Ivo's anguished cry followed me as I fell the long descent to the rocks and water and blackness below.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Anaesthetized**_

I was in a coma for more than a week. Ivo rarely left my side. He was there the first time I drifted back to reality and then again when I came back for good. I remember feeling comforted seeing him, knowing he was there. I felt so terribly sick and weak. And I saw him and thought to myself, "There's Ivo", and drifted back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that he was in control of everything though I didn't understand it that way at the time. Once I woke up and Isabel was there and I cried like anything and flailed about helplessly. I didn't want her. I wanted Ivo. I wanted to feel safe.

There were tubes in every part of my body – my throat and nose and wrists and penis. Every time I moved, I felt one tugging somewhere. It was uncomfortable but it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. I just felt very weak, like a newborn kitten. I wanted the sick, weak feeling to go away.

The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive, that even if the fall hadn't killed me – and I had fallen nearly one hundred feet – I should have drowned. It took so long to get to me. Ivo had almost jumped off the cliff after me but he was far too rational for that. Instead he had scaled down the side of it, screaming for help. He got to me before anyone else, gave me mouth-to-mouth and immobilized me so that no further damage could be done to my spine or any other part of my body that was broken. The nurses said he was a hero. And that he never left my side.

The first day I was awake for a whole hour, meaning I didn't drift in and out of consciousness, Ivo talked to me, telling me how happy he was to see me, how much he loved me. He even cried a little but he said he was crying from joy because he had been so afraid that he might lose me and he couldn't bear the idea of life without me. I was too exhausted to respond and fell back into a deep sleep. He was more together when I saw him next. He stroked my hair and asked me if I needed anything. I needed to get the fucking tubes out of every part of my body so that I didn't feel so sick but I couldn't speak with the ones in my throat and nose. I just held his hand pitifully and cried a little. I wanted to go home but I couldn't tell him that either.

They took the tubes out one by one, leaving the catheter in the longest. I couldn't walk because my back and legs had been injured. I was able to eat jello and pudding and finally some clear broth. Ivo spoon-fed me and I could tell that it pleased him though whether that was because I was alive or because I was totally dependent on him I wasn't sure. Probably it was both. Once I was able to use the toilet, he helped me there as well, holding my penis for me while I urinated and cried because it hurt so much. He bathed me and changed my gown and I grew to resent being so completely helpless that he had to do it all for me. I wished I had died, that the fall had killed me as I intended for it to. But I couldn't tell that to the psychiatrists. That would mean an even longer stay in the hospital. Ivo told them it was an accident, that I had fallen over the edge and I readily supported the lie. I wanted to get out as much as he wanted to get me out.

We spoke candidly once I was able to use my voice. He said he wanted to take me back home with him. I was still quite an invalid and had no one else. My mother was hospitalized and my only other option was Aunt Clarissa or another hospital. He would care for me, support me, while I recovered. It wasn't as if I had a job even if I could work. We had already planned on living together next year – him supporting me so that I could work on my novel. Why not stick to that plan? He understood that I felt my feelings for him had changed, but what if I was wrong? I was young and confused and volatile. There were so many issues in my past I had not dealt with. Why not stay together for companionship if nothing else? I had no one else, he had no one else and how could being alone ever be profitable? We could suspend our sexual relationship for a while. He'd find that hard, but then some things in life were hard. The most important thing was that I get back on my feet. He went on like that for what seemed like hours.

He was right, of course. I had no one else to care for me, no money, no job prospects to return home to, so why not just stick with the original plan? It sounded easy. I needed something easy. I was too weak to think of an alternative. Of course, he did have a few stipulations – I would see a psychiatrist to help me sort out some unresolved issues (he didn't specify what those might be) and I would agree to allow him to participate in that. He hastened to reassure me that he had no interest in controlling me, he simply wanted me to get well. He was very open – he wanted to be with me permanently. He knew he reprimanded me, found fault with me, but that was because he loved me and I was so young and still had the chance of being someone remarkable. "Isn't that permitted in someone older than you who loves you, to try to set you right? You could say I am trying to make a perfect partner for myself."

I wanted to say something about not wanting to be made into anything but I felt queasy and needed to go to the toilet – to throw up and defecate. I let him help me out of bed.

We left Juneau two weeks later. Ivo had already missed the first month of classes, but he said he wasn't worried about it. He would take the whole semester off, the whole year off, if need be. He would borrow money to be able to stay at home with me. He might even go in for a grant so that he could stay at home and write. I urged him to return to his classes, assuring him that I was quite capable of being home alone and I didn't want to interrupt his work. He told me nothing was more important than me and he would give up everything to be with me. That was too much for me. I promptly took a pill and slept the remainder of the trip.

And so we came home, Ivo and me.


	5. Chapter 5

**WARNING: SLASH!**

**_Inequalities_  
**

Ivo was not simply the dominant member in our relationship; he devoured me. I realize now that my infidelities were a calculated effort to save myself from wholly losing whatever identity I had as a man. I would never be his equal in intellect, never make up the vast differences in experience he wore as negligently as the silver chain around his neck. By definition, I would always be younger, the student, and he would always be older, the professor. No amount of time would ever close that gap.

The one arena where I wielded absolute control over him was our sex life. He needed me in a way that made him weak, subservient. He would come begging to my bed, often drunk to hide his shame, desperate for relief from those painfully ordinary bodily desires that equalize all men. I had only to beckon and he would skive off class, call in sick to an out-of-town conference, cancel a meeting with a colleague. Ivo might have walked higher than me in the Great Republic of Learning. But I owned his dick.

My last year of school, when I was home much of the time writing my novel, he took to appearing midday so that we might eat together. Ostensibly it was so that he could break up the monotony of my day, give me a sounding board if I was stuck on something. But as these prandial discussions invariably turned into wild sexual romps in various rooms, it was clear to me that he worried I might be losing interest in him and our domestic existence. I therefore took it upon myself to surprise him.

He returned home one Wednesday, the day of his late seminar with his graduate students, to find me lying in wait. I had shed my usual practical jumper/sweats ensemble to appear beguiling, enticing the moment he laid eyes on me. I wasn't altogether certain _how_one in my position should dress; Ivo and I led such a secret existence. I had never seen any other homosexual couples, at least ones who were "out". I stripped to ragged-hemmed jeans, held up by a Wild West sort of brown leather belt. The rest of me I left bare, save the dog collar around my neck – a statement of my place in his household. Ivo took one look at me and could barely suppress his laughter. "Our Lady of the Flowers, I presume?" he asked, his mouth twitching. "All dressed up for the rent boys' ball?"

Oh, he could scorn me all he wanted. What a tongue he had in those days. But we both knew then he was my absolute servant. He didn't even bother with the niceties. He dropped his coat and briefcase hastily and succumbed entirely to lust, taking me then and there in the hallway.


	6. Chapter 6

**_Corresponding Levels of Contentment_**

Human beings are creatures of habit. Comfortable with the roles they play in their social lives, even their private personas assume proportions that fit well with their domestic life, notably with that of their mates. The latest incarnation of the odd couple - the boy and the professor - were on the couch, with heads propped at each end, each with book of choice in hand.

The boy occupied a full two-thirds of the sofa (as Ivo pointed out several times during the course of the hour), his long elegant limbs stretched in calculated laziness so that one rested of the back of the sofa and the other ran the length of it, bare toes nestled into the professor's underarm which they tickled periodically to remind him of the boy's deep and everlasting love for him. He was dressed in appropriate collegiate attire – worn baggy jeans and nothing else. Not even, Ivo suspected, under garments (he didn't ask). He was reading Agatha Christie's _And then there were none_.

Ivo had actually occupied the space first, having ensconced himself on _his_ couch shortly after returning from his seminar. He was still fully dressed from university – trousers and jumper – sans jacket and shoes (his mother had reared him never to put one's shoes on the furniture). He was happily reading N. Scott Momaday's _House Made of Dawn_when Tim arrived and promptly appropriated the bulk of his reading platform.

"There is another couch," he pointed to the one adjacent, not bothering to remove his nose from his book.

"That one doesn't interest me," the boy's biggish toe gave him an affectionate nudge.

"I could move," Ivo said doubtfully, being so comfortably situated and all, and having been for the better part of the hour.

"Yes, but then I couldn't tickle you with my bare feet," Tim pointed out.

"We have a bed for that activity."

"It isn't bedtime and we are reading."

"One of us is reading," the professor concurred only with half of the statement. "I am not certain your novel constitutes reading material."

Tim snorted.

"You are distracting me." Purposefully stern, _professorial_.

"Am I more interesting than your book?" Feigned astonishment.

"You are certainly more demanding than my book!" Ivo sounded pained.

"Then clearly you are reading the wrong book," the boy quipped, peeking at him from behind his mystery.

Ivo gave him a baleful look and went back to his text, blissfully content.


	7. Chapter 7

_**The Surface of the Sun**_

The first time I understood the brutal side of Ivo, the first time I was able to reconcile the scientist with the poet with the lover with the violence, was when we were walking in a gale on the beach. A native to the area, I knew we should return home at once. But Ivo was animated by the wind's ferocity and turning to me with electric eyes proposed we walk further. I was astonished and told him a storm was coming, but he laughed and called my beach "tame". This was the first time I realized that he had seen more savage beaches, that for him half of the joy of what he did lay in the fact that he faced perilous conditions.

Later I would witness his tenacity when white-water rafting, hear him shout in triumph when sailing in a storm, watch him walk out to the furthest rock as the tide came in - threatening, though never touching, him. He was, at heart, a wild thing and like all wild things was only happy in his element.

I remember the sad expression on his face when he announced that my beach had no fossils on it, "Not a single one." It damned coastal Suffolk in his eyes; we, as a species, had failed.

Not so the Jurassic Coast where we vacationed that Easter. It had the decency to preserve the footsteps of history - that chaotic primeval beginning with which my lover was obsessed. Days he would spend combing the area for something he had not yet seen. Hours he would pour over a single rock, finding in it more answers than there were questions to ask.

I marveled at his savagery, juxtaposed so incongruously against his professorial mode.

"How do you manage?" I asked as we ordered tea in a quiet cafe.

"Manage what?" He was genuinely confused.

"To be such a walking contradiction?"

"I am not contradictory," he replied evenly. "I am what happens when a volcano on earth meets a tornado from the sun."


	8. Chapter 8

_**Snow Man**_

Life with Ivo was unpredictable at best. No sooner had I adjusted to his rhythms and felt we had arrived at some level of domestic stability, he would surprise me. This was not always in a negative way – he could be as gentle as he was brutal.

The first snow day, I did what any other student would do – stayed in bed. I assumed we might read, alternate coffee and tea and wine, probably have some sort of love making at various intervals in the course of the day. But whatever the day would involve, I assumed snow meant staying indoors.

Ivo was up at 7 am, dressing hurriedly and ripping the covers off to exhort me to follow suit. When I protested, noting that classes were cancelled and outside it was _cold_, he gave me a withering look that informed me I was completely inadequate as a human being.

"Where are you off to?" I rather thought I was enticing, all naked and warm in bed.

"To build a snowman." He may as well have said, "to Mars".

"What?" I was astonished. "Why ever would you want to do that?"

"It's tradition," he said, looking at me as though I were daft for failing to ascertain that on my own.

It struck me as odd that Ivo should follow any tradition. He seemed such an iconoclast. I had never thought of him as being _from_ somewhere - as having a past, a family, any connection to the world apart from his sporadic forays into the wild of Alaska. This was my first glimpse into that other side of him, that secret part of him he hid so well.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: **If you are interested in No Night is too Long, why not join whitwit and me on the communities created specifically for the boys?

On Live Journal: no-night DOT livejournal DOT com/profile

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We'd love to have others to fangirl with!

Happy reading!

~ pace is the trick

_**The Violence Inherent in the System**_

_"Violence is a calm that disturbs you."_

~ Jean Genet

I was working on my term paper - Genet, "Violence Inherent in Homosexuality" - and it occurred to me that I should ask Ivo for his opinion. He was, after all, the only homosexual I knew and I was certain he had an opinion on the subject. (I supposed I considered myself gay but as he was the only man I had a relationship with in my adult years, I wasn't entirely certain if I was actually homosexual or merely madly in love with Ivo.)

As predicted, Ivo did have strong feelings on the topic and proceeded to speak on the matter much as he would in one of his lectures or at a conference.

"The question," he said thoughtfully, refilling his wine glass, "of violence in Genet's work is one that cannot be discussed without noting the position of homosexuals during that era. _Notre-Dame des fleurs_ was written at a time when being gay was not simply illegal, it was punishable by death. Nazism in Europe was in full swing and gay men were sent to their deaths exactly as Jews, Communists, or any other enemy of the state were. That said, there was of course a sub-culture that reveled in the idea of _dirty _or immoral sex. The Nazis were notorious for their clubs where one might witness anything – not simply topless dancers but the sexual act between women, men, beast and any combination thereof. Homosexuals, relegated to this sphere, began to regard themselves much as their audience saw them.

"So which comes first – a violent gay subculture or a culture that superimposes its delight in violent, sexual, _deviant _behaviour on the homosexual community? Bear in mind that as we are treated, so we become; this is why we are exhorted to 'treat others as if they were the person they could be so that they might become that person'. If homosexuals are treated as criminals, are placed in extreme situations for the entertainment of others, who is to blame?"

I was scribbling furiously; I felt he was writing my paper for me.

"This leads us further to the matter of the type of person likely to engage openly in homosexual sex. A gentleman might well long for another of his sex but marry a woman and suppress his natural desires as it is the right and godly thing to do. The code of gentlemen is that a man cannot strike a woman but should cut down any man who calls into question a woman's honor. Are we to infer, then, that men are violent only with one another, never with women, and that by extension homosexual men are violent with one another because their masculine nature dictates that it must be so, or because it is a social construct that has yet to allow for homosexual relationships?"

He paused and when I had finished writing his last sentence, I looked up at him, waiting for him to resume.

"Oh, no!" he laughed at me. "You are writing this paper. I am merely posing some questions you might choose to answer."

I scowled at him darkly. Most assuredly I would stay up all night working on my paper and leave him to his empty bed.

I seriously considered signing my name "Our Tim of the Flowers" but decided I shouldn't risk an argument with Martin.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Being Gay in the 90s **_or_ **Why Ivo Wears Jewelry and a Leather Jacket**_

When I first met Ivo I was probably more confused by the silver chain he wore than anything else. It seemed so completely not Ivo to me. The only jewelry I wore was my watch and my earring. Those would have made sense on Ivo. But a chain? I didn't get it. Fashion-wise, he was as much a dinosaur as the fossil rubbings on his wall.

And then I began to understand the culture that he had come from, how different his life had been to mine, he having some twenty years experience on me. Ivo had always been gay, had grown up frequenting bathrooms for sex. Most men of his generation didn't have "normal" relationships. Their lives were defined more by their secret sexual acts than anything else.

I remember after I first met him wondering if he would phone me. Men called women they wanted to date, but I wasn't sure if men called men. I was completely clueless as to what gay men did actually. I remember sitting by the phone hoping he would call. I even practiced a few times, imagining our light conversation that might lead to a dinner invitation. I wondered if I would play hard-to-get, like most girls. That would be difficult to pull off since I had kissed before I ever spoke a word to him.

He never called me.

And then I realized that he _couldn't _do that. He didn't know how to date. The most he could do was have me over to watch a movie and eat Chinese food before sex. But he would never walk with me, holding hands, or kiss me publicly. He never put his arm around me or introduced me as his boyfriend. That would only take place behind closed doors.

The chain, like his outdated leather jacket, was his way of identifying himself as an outsider, someone who did not belong to the mainstream. It was a quiet signal to other gay men that he was available. So of course once we had clearly established we were dating, I proposed he lose it as he was now taken and had no business frequenting bathrooms for sex. And in his very Ivo way, rather than conform to my expectations, he promptly went out and purchased a gold chain for me.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Of greatness and men  
**_

In retrospect, I find it ironic that I should be the one repudiating the Great Man theory of history. Ivo was the evolutionist, the scientist who saw the beginnings of life in tiny amoebas that came into being when the earth was hotter than any hell imaginable; the neo-Darwinist who argued strenuously against any God and, by extrapolation, against the superiority of one man over another; the proponent of learning as the means of eradicating prejudice and therein so many injustices dealt by man to his fellow.

And yet, for all the adages he flung at me like daggers, he was the very embodiment of the great secular Humanist. He belonged to that sacred era of Enlightenment when men devoted themselves entirely to intellectual interchange. He was too bright, too learned, too accomplished to fit in this very real world. The academic life became his safe-harbor; there, he could pretend that all was as it should be.

He deplored my ignorance, declaring me an atavistic throwback, noting that in earlier centuries it was presumed man would learn literature and art on the side – formal education was for the sciences and mathematics. He was appalled that nothing in my early education had stuck, that I should be so fundamentally backward – _agrarian_– in my outlook on the world. We were separated, he and I, not merely by decades but by a culture that admitted only the elite, the select few who had the drive and intelligence to differentiate themselves from the rest of the lowly masses.

I look at Ivo now and see that he would have been happiest cloistered from the banality of life. He should have been a Jesuit priest, a rabbi, or maybe Erasmus. The constant friction he endured trying to find his place among ordinary men is what broke him in the end. And I understand today as I did not then that my part in his life is to protect him from the ordinariness of his existence.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Summer**_

Perhaps the best and the worst part of loving Ivo was discovering that his talent in my field was greater than my own. I should have guessed it, given his propensity for the arts - after all, we first bonded over an opera with which he was not familiar, a fact that surprised us both.

I first suspected him of being hopelessly romantic when, in a maudlin moment, he commenced reciting poetry for me. Not merely poetry but arguably some of the finest ever written.

Was I expecting "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Instead I got:

_Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:__  
__I'm martyr to a motion not my own;__  
__What's freedom for? To know eternity._

and

_As often-times the too resplendent sun__  
__Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon__  
__Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won__  
__A single ballad from the nightingale,__  
__So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,__  
__And all my sweetest singing out of tune.__And as at dawn across the level mead__  
__On wings impetuous some wind will come,__  
__And with its too harsh kisses break the reed__  
__Which was its only instrument of song,__  
__So my too stormy passions work me wrong,__  
__And for excess of Love my Love is dumb._

"When did you study poetry?" I demanded, now on wine and feeling the belligerence that always surfaced prior to our violent love making.

"I wanted to be an English major at Nottingham. My father was a geologist, though, so I followed him down that path. He would never have forgiven me if I hadn't. But I did take a few summer courses for fun."

How like Ivo to tackle something giving the rest of us fits "for fun". Only he could see the very demanding world of writing as relief.

"So why do you stick with something you hate?" All hostility was gone and I felt genuinely curious that he would work so hard in a profession he had not chosen for himself.

"Oh I quite love what I do," he said amiably, very much on wine as well by that time. "I can't imagine being anything other than a paleontologist."

"But surely dinosaurs don't interest you!" I exploded in protest. It seemed so contradictory to the poetic Ivo sitting across from me.

"The progression of life on earth interests me," he said, contemplating his empty glass. "Evolution, the creation and destruction of ecosystems, the emerging complexity, the birth of something new from the death of something else. Time is an endless work of art writing its history in the natural face of the earth."

"Ivo," I whispered, "That's the most beautiful thing you have ever said." I felt closer to him than ever before in that moment, _wanted _to be closer to him. I wanted him to make love to me, to join our restless spirits gently so that we might become one.

He looked confused. "More so than the poetry?"

And he reached for the bottle of wine.


	13. Chapter 13

**Note: For this drabble, I pulled from the movie scene in which young Tim is shown as being the favorite boy toy at his boarding school from a very early age, and from the book when he describes the act as "something one just did" – like "eating sweets or smoking weed or not washing much". **

**This ficlet in _no way, shape or form_ advocates pedophilia. Rather, it is an attempt to understand Tim's adult behavior as a logical extension of the survival skills he learned as a child at school as well as to explain his disgust with his own homosexuality.**

**WARNINGS FOR UNDERAGE ILLICIT SEX, M/M SEX, MATURE THEMES AND PROSTITUTION**

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_**Survival Skills**_

He learned early on how to use his body to control others. He was pretty, like a girl, and like a girl he soon realized how much others sought him out, how the older boys craved his company. But unlike a girl, he learned to play it as only a boy could.

It started off as affectionate hugs and chaste pecks on his cheek. But soon enough they were guiding his hands between their legs, encouraging him to rub them through the thick wool of their trousers. Next they came to his bed at night, to lie naked with him. He learned how to handle their erect cocks - lubricating them with his own spittle or the pre-cum they oozed if they were old enough; how to squeeze their balls so that they gasped; how to coax them to climax.

By the time he was ten he was a favorite for anal sex. In the showers or in his bed, they came to him one by one, introducing him to their pleasures when they were buried deep within him. At first he cried and wanted them to stop, but they begged so nicely. He learned how to press down and back against them to reduce the pain, making them moan deliciously.

He relished the control he wielded over them. In the universe of sensuality, he reigned supreme, uncontested. He learned to add a hypnotizing hitch to his gait that drew their absolute attention when he walked past. He learned to tilt his head and narrow his eyes enticingly so that they curried his favor, gave him gifts and privileges and money.

He turned his charm on his teachers and while they bedded him with considerably less frequency than his schoolmates, they invariably gave him high marks for half-arsed efforts. He was the favorite in class - clever, quiet, mysterious.

When he arrived at university, he discovered that his sexual prowess worked equally well on females. He could keep half-a-dozen of them dangling. They did his laundry, stocked his fridge, paid his bar tab, even lent him their cars. When he ruined one vehicle, he walked away not merely debt-free and forgiven, but cherished; Emily had been concerned about his well-being, not the 500 quid repair bill she couldn't pay.

0o0o0o0

He noticed the man watching him from his office window. A professor. He smiled to himself. He'd always found others' initial interest in him irresistable. He immediately set out to meet him, draw him into his web, his newest victim. Except -

It didn't work.

Ivo didn't fall under his spell.

Ivo got on with his own life with zero regard for Tim's place in it.

It was maddening.

Disorienting.

Disarming.

Enthralling.

Exhilarating.

Suddenly he needed a whole new set of skills to survive Dr. Ivo Steadman.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Life and Fate**_

It was Ivo who taught me that I had the ability to make my own fate, to determine my own role in our relationship. Had I once thought of us in the simplistic terms of male/female, active/passive, dominant/submissive? He mocked me for falling victim to historical and literary canon. The ancient Greeks, he pointed out, had defined homosexual relationships as such. Surely in the year Our Lord 1995 I could produce something that if not revolutionary at least altered the paradigm.

He was of course correct. In my youthful insecurity and my near-adulation of his apparent wisdom, I chose to cast myself as the passive, feminine one - coquette to his svengali. But then he even made me question that – calling me a whore for all the women I had fucked to spite him. How very telling, he said in his deadliest tone, that I had had to take a woman to bed to wound him, that I was too bound by tradition to seek out another man. I was worse than any cliche.

His derision left me smarting and when I first began to write, I was determined to emerge the new Genet, on a par with Satre's _Saint Genet_. My pen would turn heads to tails, make every reader rethink everything they had ever thought before so that future generations would still be pondering the placement of a comma or the isolation of a sentence.

Five years later, I am more realistic, wanting simply to lay to rest those memories that have bound me, dragged me down in chains to the abyss of despair.

Last year, I dedicated my first book to Ivo:

_For Ivo, who has long had his doubts about the younger generation._

Only now do I realize that while I owe Ivo much in its creation, I had actually written it for my mother.


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: This is an exploration of what I believe to have been Ivo's "love" life prior to Tim (or Danny in my fic, Shells). While it may seem callous, my understanding of homosexual relationships in this time period – the early 1980s - is that it was virtually impossible to have an open relationship in a small town and that most gay men hid their sexuality, even from their family members. **

**If this was in fact the case, it explains a great deal about Ivo's sexual behaviour. I have toyed with that idea in the drabble below. **

**Warning: Explicit m/m sex**

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_**Dirty Little Secret **_

The sound of slapping skin and heavy panting drowned out any other conversation. He was close - a few more thrusts and he'd be on his way. The man beneath him groaned as he shoved harder and harder into his tight hole. He liked them this way. Inexperienced. Putty in his hands. Unlike most men his age, he had no trouble taking someone's cherry. He didn't feel the same aversion to virgins. He even fucked straight guys, preferred it almost. He loved being in control.

He could be gentle and slow if that was what they needed. He could spend hours preparing them, coaxing them along so that they shed their inhibitions and let him have what he wanted. He was a very considerate partner and willing to give first to get later.

But today he was in a hurry. It was a 40-minute drive back to Warwick and he had a lecture this afternoon. He really needed to finish and get on the road. He glanced down contemptuously at the back of the figure bending over. He watched his cock thrust in and out, pleased at how fully he was able to penetrate given how tight the guy was. Just a few more thrusts and he'd be all the way in.

He spread the man's legs wider and resituated him, lifting his hips up and then back. He speared him and the man made a lowing sound, like a cow in the field begging to brought in for milking. He scoffed out loud, finding the metaphor apt, and then shoved as deep as he could into the other's bowels and hit his release.

He stepped out of the public toilet, reeking of sex and sweat, and lit a cigarette. The poor bloke was stammering about seeing him again. Ivo leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek, shaking his head simultaneously.

"I'm not from around here," he said, turning to walk away. "But thanks for the fuck."

He took a deep drag from his cigarette and turned his thoughts to his lecture.


	16. Chapter 16

**AN**: This is the scene we are missing in the book. :)

_**Miss You**_

I wasn't quite sure how our reunion would go. I felt excited and anxious and cool simultaneously. The written word allows a level of intimacy that is simply too uncomfortable up close and personal. Ivo and I had had a light, easy relationship prior to his departure, although we fought pretty much all the time after he refused either to cancel the trip or take me with him.

The summer had been a whirlwind romance - passionate letters, drunken phone calls, valuable gifts to win my favor. He had courted me in a fashion worthy of Blake or Wordsworth, sweeping me off my feet with his ardor - and I didn't even like the Romantics! How could we possibly face one another after that? I dreaded it. What would we say to one another? Would he kiss me, fuck me on the spot? Would he unpack while I sat on his bed hearing more of his adventures with none of my own to offer him?

He had proposed picking me up in P. and driving me back to N. to save me the train ride. It was our unspoken agreement that I would live with him while keeping my room in a flat shared by five others. It gave me someplace to stay when he had company or was traveling and kept the gossip down. I had packed for term three days earlier, leaving me little to wear or read. I spent the days smoking and revising what was to be my first novel, my nights drinking myself into a stupor to block out the telly my mother now kept on at all times to banish her own loneliness.

I placed my bags on the porch and watched for him. I changed my mind, not wanting to appear desperate, and moved my bags back upstairs and lay down on my bed. After ten unendurable minutes, I moved them back downstairs in the hall and sat at the kitchen table. I didn't want to stay in the house one second longer than absolutely necessary.

The doorbell rang and my heart first failed and then beat so violently I was fairly certain I was having a heart attack. My face flushed hot and my knees went wobbly and my legs were barely able to perambulate me to answer. I tried to compose myself, think of something clever to say. I had an image of his mocking smile that contrasted violently with the man I had come to know through correspondence. I had lost the ability to salivate and my tongue was now glued to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. I wanted to cry, give up, crawl into a hole somewhere and die.

But this was Ivo. My Ivo. Coming to pick me up to take me home, back to my true home. I managed the twenty-odd feet to the door and wrenched it open, no longer caring what impression I made. I was doing plenty of damage to myself on my own; there wasn't much more he could do to ruin me completely.

How wrong I was!

Ivo stood in the doorway bearing flowers, a penitent look on his face. "Can you ever forgive me for leaving you all summer?" he asked, low and urgent.

I fell into his arms, crying.


	17. Chapter 17

**AN: I recently watched the film _Judas Kiss_ and fell in love with the character, Danny Reyes. I loved him so much, I borrowed him from Carlos (the writer of _Judas Kiss_ is Carlos Pedraza and he knows I have borrowed his character; that's him cocking his eyebrow over there). If you haven't yet seen Judas Kiss, YOU MUST! It is simply wonderful! Hands down the best gay film to come out of the US in forever. The acting is extraordinary and the special effects are something you wouldn't expect in an Indie film. Look for Carlos' next film, _Something like Summer_, coming very soon. And yeah, Carlos, I will probably wind up borrowing someone from there as well. If you quit creating such wonderful characters, I will quit stealing them. :D  
**

* * *

**In which Ivo meets Danny. And falls madly in love.**

_**Photograph**_

They'd met when Danny was his student. He was a first year, struggling through an Intro to Geology course to fulfill his science requirement. He'd gone to Ivo's office for help - he'd been failing his homework and tests. For all his surly looks, he was actually quite well-mannered and outgoing - always interested in what other people were doing. That was part of being a director - finding things of interest in other people's activities. I should have done that as a writer but I was too focused on myself.

He was loquacious and easy to get to know. He loved the dinosaur models in Ivo's office, the paintings and fossil rubbings. He was passionate about dinosaurs, had had a large collection as a child. He wanted to make a movie about dinosaurs. Ivo showed him some of the sketches he'd done of the ones recently discovered - what they thought they might have looked like. They'd just learned that many species had feathers. Danny nearly died laughing. Ivo said it was all very Dr. Seuss and they fell in love with one another on the spot, though neither one knew it at the time. They were just very happy in one another's company, the way love makes you happy - silly and excited and new and shiny. The way love makes you special to somebody else.

Ivo had been on the verge of flunking him for the year but he was so charmed by the boy's enthusiasm for his own profession that he took it upon himself to tutor him so that he might pass. At any rate, that was how it started - Danny in Ivo's office every day for office hours where they chatted about any number of things, once in a great moon the subject matter of the class. I rather suspect that Danny didn't pass, that Ivo just doctored the test results to get him through. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Danny was so interested in Ivo he managed to master inroductory geology.

It was another month after that before they became lovers. By then, Danny was a fixture in Ivo's life; he called him by his first name and went out for beer with him. He didn't go to Ivo's house though. Not yet. They began to think of one another as "friends", which was already quite daring for a student/professor relationship. Danny had his phone number. All of the students had Ivo's phone number for emergency purposes but _Danny had his phone number._ I think at that point it must have been clear to both of them which direction the relationship was heading. Ivo just needed to get Danny out of his class so that he wasn't breaking any rules. But Hailfax came first.

Ivo used to go to Seaview Park in Halifax for sex. Gay cruising was quite common and the location was known to be cop free. He'd drive there sometimes after his evening lecture. On Friday night, he often went up and booked a hotel room in the city for the weekend. That way he could leisurely find someone in the park to keep him company and forget the stress of his academic life for a few days. The shock of finding Danny in the park nearly finished him off. He'd seen the back of him and smiled because the boy reminded him of Danny because his build was so similar. He actually thought he might pick him up. The horror of finding himself face-to-face with his student made him run away. Of course he'd known Danny was gay - gay men can sense one another like cats in heat - and had already planned to get closer to him after finals were over. But seeing him out in the open like that - Ivo said he felt like he had been caught with his pants down. Which was more or less the case.

So Ivo fled. And Danny followed, in hot pursuit I imagine. When he caught up to him, he was blunt - he had wanted Ivo from the very beginning, he didn't want to wait any longer. He threw himself at him. Ivo said he tried to resist and I believe him; he would have been worried about propriety, about repercussions to his career. He was still very much in the closet though his closest friends probably suspected he was gay given the total absence of women in his life. Ivo was never one to be open about anything, most certainly not his sexual preferences. And whatever ideas he had about Danny in the back of his mind, most certainly they did not include an encounter in Seaview Park. But as in all things, Danny was persistent. He had him cornered; no way would he let him go.

They spent the weekend in the hotel room, not even bothering to get out of bed. Ivo ordered room service when they were hungry. Danny was of that wonderfully young age that he was perpetually hard and no matter how many times Ivo fucked him, it was never enough. He'd be begging it for it again not one hour later. Ivo said it was the best sex he'd ever had. That should have hurt me but I learned the story much later. That Ivo should fall head over heels for a hot young thing in his class seemed perfectly rational to me. I could imagine that Danny left him shaking and panting and desperate for more.

Ivo drove him back to the city and broached the unpleasant topic that they had to keep their affair clandestine until Danny finished out the semester. Danny gave him that look that said 'I'm not stupid, you know," and Ivo dropped him off at his dorm room. Class the next day was agonizing and it was all he could do to remember his lecture. He was suddenly very self-conscious of being in front of an audience. He let them go early. Danny followed him to his office and he hissed at him, telling him to go away but Danny pointed out that a change in routine would be far more suspicious.

Ivo fucked him in his office, appalled that he could so easily abandon his professional discipline. It was just that Danny naked and bending over his desk was too much temptation. Ivo was very much human, very much a man. How many men could resist something that was literally thrown in their path? Danny came to his house later that night. Ivo wanted to send him away but wanted him to stay even more. So he let him in. The feel of Danny in his bed was wonderful. He'd never had a boyfriend, he'd moved around too much as a child and a young professional. Waking up with Danny in the morning was the most beautiful feeling in the world. He never wanted him to leave.

Danny actually moved in before the semester was over though they were discreet about it. Even after that, they kept the lid on their relationship. Wolfeville was a large town but there was no point rocking the boat. Ivo wasn't sure how it would be received and he wasn't tenured. Danny could care less what they did so long as he had Ivo. Unlike me, he readily agreed to whatever Ivo wanted and over time Ivo grew bolder and began to take him places - to conferences and conventions. He never introduced Danny as his boyfriend but it was quite obvious to everyone who met him, the young boy with no scientific education accompanying Ivo. Danny was accepted and liked simply for being Ivo's. Still there was something magnetic about him - something that drew people to him.

I looked at the photograph of him - his black disheveled hair spilling over his forehead. His young face gaunt and pale. His lips full but tucked, as if too easily hurt. His eyes inscrutable. I wondered. Was it all just a show? Did he muster that bravado simply to get through a life he found otherwise unendurable? How much of him was real? And how much a face he showed the world?

Even Ivo didn't seem to know.


	18. Chapter 18

_****_**AN: Once again I borrow Danny Reyes from _Judas Kiss_ and Carlos Pedraza. **

_**Of man and beast**_

Ivo wasn't yet doing Alaska when he had Danny but they had spent a summer in New Mexico in the Apache Canyon where Ivo was researching Triassic fauna, specifically holotype theropods. Danny was supposedly working on a script for his senior thesis but he was fascinated by the local wildlife and spent hours in the canyon shooting footage he would never use.

"Are you making a movie on Wild America?" Ivo asked, thoroughly amused at the change in focus. He was less amused when the critters found their way into his living quarters.

"What is _that_?" He pointed to a small brownish ball in a cardboard box.

"That is an orphaned jackrabbit," Danny said matter-of-factly. "I am nursing it back to health."

"I see." And Ivo frowned a little at the concept of wild things in his bedroom.

The addition of the bull snake, the tortoise, the quail with the broken wing, the over-sized scorpion forced him to say something.

"For heaven's sake, Danny, let nature take its course! These animals were meant to die!" They were in serious danger of facing an overcrowding problem if things continued this way.

"It isn't 'nature', Ivo," he turned his back to pick up the crippled kit fox and hold it. "This is man's work - unnatural disasters in the natural world."

Ivo sighed in exasperation but not two days later he was cursing tourists for their nefarious deeds in the canyon. "One of our dinosaurs is missing!" he huffed.

Danny smiled and added the large blind lizard to the menagerie.


	19. Chapter 19

**AN: And once again, Danny Reyes courtesy of Carlos Pedraza and _Judas Kiss_. **

**Be sure to read whitwit's Ivo/Tim fic at fanfiction DOT net / s / 8135001 / 1 /**

**You know how to remove the spaces and all that ;)  
**

**Happy reading!  
**

**~ pace is the trick  
**

* * *

_**Canadian Psycho**_

Danny once filmed Isabel in the shower. He walked in on her. She screamed at the top of her lungs, throwing shampoo bottles and razors at him. She shrieked, "Have you seen 'Psycho'?"

"Of course," the camera said demurely, not bouncing once as it dodged flying objects.

After railing a bit more she calmed down and asked him what he thought Ivo would say to his filming his sister naked in the shower.

"Oh, I doubt he will care," the camera was far too busy studying her anatomy from different angles.

"Have you developed a liking for the female body?" she asked, posing provocatively. "Shall I show you more?"

"No, please," came the strangled response before the camera clicked off. "Vaginas terrify me."

"You have issues," was the last thing I heard her disembodied voice say.


	20. Chapter 20

**AN: Yeah, Danny from _Judas Kiss_ again. **

_**Dress-up games  
**_

Danny once dressed up as Ivo at a conference. He thought it would be entertaining to watch the reactions.

"You aren't dressing up as me," Ivo protested. "I wear jeans and jumpers. You must be mistaking me for Dr. Bolton."

But Danny just stuck out his tongue and added the bowler hat Ivo had once worn in a college rag and the pipe purchased specifically for Ivo's annual snowman. ("Careful with that pipe! It's an heirloom now!")

And so they went - Ivo in his leather jacket and jeans and Danny in an ill-fitting suit, tie, hat, and pipe. Of course he was the hit of the day. Simply everyone fell for him and Ivo grumbled that no one even listened to his earth-shattering lecture he had worked so hard on. But it was when they got home that the real fun started.

"I always wanted to sleep with one of my professors," Ivo confessed, dragging Danny down on top of him by his tie.

The pipe fell to the floor where it was recovered by the maid the next morning. It was only missed when Ivo built the snowman that winter but all he could do was laugh at the memory.


	21. Chapter 21

**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**SPOILERS!**

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**AN: If you are reading Shells, be warned that this drabble contains spoilers, in particular Danny! **

******Danny Reyes appears courtesy of Carlos Pedraza and _Judas Kiss_. **

_**The Book of Daniel**_

Surely there could have been no better setting for my conversation with Isabel. I thought to myself that Danny would have loved it. The rain came hard and heavy and the lights in the cottage flickered off and on with the wind's every violent exhalation. It was as close to a hurricane as the island had ever experienced. If I believed in ghosts, I would have believed him there with us. I envisioned him in a frenzy, trying to break out of the shadow lands and come back, make himself heard one last time.

We were alone in the house. Ivo and Kit had gone to move the boat in, racing to beat the storm. The opportunity had landed in my lap like a gift from Heaven. She sat on the day bed, eyes firmly fixed on her wine glass; I at her feet, eyes firmly fixed on her. The weather intensified our emotions, leaving us both a bit unhinged. I wasn't about to let her get away.

"Tell me," I commanded, sensing that she was weakening.

She sighed, eyes closing shut. "Ivo will be angry. He doesn't want you to know anything about it."

"I already know a great deal," I pointed out.

"Yes. But you aren't supposed to." I was suddenly aware she had aged that night, she had the same world-weary look that had long haunted Ivo. "It was all so long ago, Tim."

"Did he kill himself?" It seemed logical to me that he had. It explained so much - about Ivo. About me. About his reaction to what I did.

"What - ? Why would you - ?" She was momentarily at a loss. And then, "No," she shook her head firmly. "No. Danny was killed. As Ivo almost was."

I waited for her to continue, holding my breath in anticipation of the information. After nearly a year, the moment had finally come.

"They were coming home. From a party, I think. Ivo never told me exactly. Most of that night was pieced together at the trial. Things the boys said. They contradicted one another some of the time. I think they just weren't really aware of what was going on. They were high and looking for trouble. But it was near the house. They were walking home. Wolfville is so small. You could walk from Acadia to their house. And they were close. Close enough that they could have gotten in and escaped. If Danny hadn't - " She took a drag of her cigarette, exhaled loudly, and began again.

"There were three of them waiting on the foot path. I don't know if they actually knew that they would be coming. They claimed they didn't but one of them had told his girlfriend he was going to rough them up. So they must have known something. The prosecutor couldn't make the pre-meditated charge stick. There was just no way to prove it.

"Once Danny's film was released, everyone knew that he was gay. And that Ivo was, since they were together. I suppose people just ignored it before then - thought of them as inseparable friends or some such. But after the film -

"There was some unpleasant talk going round – not permitting faggots on the faculty, that sort of thing. Somebody wrote something on Danny's car. Ivo said it would die down eventually. He'd seen it all before. He knew how to keep his head down and steer clear of trouble. But Danny didn't. He was a fighter through and through. He wanted to confront them.

"I don't know what Danny said to them that night. But that's what started it. Ivo begged him to go inside but he turned and walked across the street to them. He was drunk and belligerent. Ivo followed to try and reason with him, with all of them.

"The attack came in two waves. It took a long time. Longer than for most victims, the police said. He was alive for an hour or more. They left for a bit but came back to be sure they had finished him off. And nobody called for help. Not until later. They were their neighbors and they didn't help." She shook her head in disbelief. "Nobody called the police.

"Ivo was unconscious through most of it. He remembers seeing Danny on the ground, the boys circling him, kicking him. He was terrified but rushed to his aid. The first strike he delivered broke his wrist. He fell to the ground in agony. He said that that was the only thing that saved him – his breaking his own hand. He was screaming from the pain. They kicked him some but he was too pitiful. Danny was their target. Because he kept getting up. He kept coming at them, shouting at them.

"I spent months imaging how it must have happened. How Danny provoked them. 'You assholes!' he'd have said. But maybe it was just the fact that he kept fighting. They left for a while. Ivo was already unconscious and couldn't help him. Maybe they heard something and that's why they went away before coming back.

"Why did they come back?" She clutched her forehead and rocked back and forth in agonized grief. I knew she was crying. "Why did they come back? He might have lived…" It was a long moment before she could continue.

"They showed me a photo of him. I couldn't even recognize him. " And here her voice broke. "They beat him so badly, I couldn't even tell it was him. At first it was like I wasn't even part of it, I was just standing on the outside looking at the body. I didn't even register what was happening. And then one thing after another, and I understood that he was dead.

"They showed me his ring. It was the one Ivo had given him. He'd gotten it in Egypt a few years before. It was his favourite, and he gave it to Danny.

"Then we went to the morgue. The only thing I recognized was his hair. It was always a mess. I'd know that hair anywhere." She laughed ruefully. "Ivo said he needed to invest time in personal grooming, but Danny liked it that way. It was his signature, like wearing his shirt tails out when he was in a tux for opening night. He had a chip on his shoulder from growing up poor, Ivo said. He wanted to tell society to fuck off. Danny's hair..." She smiled at the memory before continuing. "His face –" she shuddered. "He was so swollen, I couldn't even make out the features. They told me later that every bone in his face had been broken, his skull shattered with blows from the baseball bat. They hit him other places but they wanted to destroy his face. They couldn't stand the sight of it.

"I had a maternal instinct – I wanted to kill them, the boys who had done this to him. If they'd been there, if I'd seen them before the arrest, I would have killed them. And they deserve to die, for what they did to him. His beautiful face…" She drew a shaky breath and reached for another cigarette. I lit it for her, not trusting her hands to contain the flame. "I wanted to take him in my arms and nurse him back to health. I wanted him to be well. For Ivo. That was my next thought. My first was to kill those boys, those killers. My next was to protect Ivo.

"Ivo had been awake for only a few hours when I told him. He woke up and he remembered everything. The doctors said it was unusual that he didn't have some sort of amnesia. I could see how desperate he was – to know Danny was okay. I thought about lying to him. But he knows me too well. So I told him. Not even in words. I looked at him and I could see the hope in his eyes. And I shook my head. And he collapsed. Silently. He never made a sound. Like a huge weight was crushing him. After that, he never looked the same to me again. It was as if that moment broke him completely. He never wanted to live again. He just climbed inside his shell and stopped talking to any of us. I never thought he would be able to feel anything for anyone again.

"Until you." She absentmindedly ground her full cigarette in the ashtray – anger or fear? She was still shaking. "When he met you, he was Ivo again. Hopelessly in love. Hopeful." She laughed but it sounded off to me. "He'd send me letters. He was so happy, so totally in love, and so terribly afraid. You were so young. Like Danny. He was afraid you might get hurt being with him."

"Did he love me because I was like Danny?" It was what I feared the most.

"God, no," she laughed loudly, "I think he loved you because you were nothing like Danny. He thought he might actually have a chance with you."

"But - " I hesitated. "I'm… I'm nothing like him. Ivo. He's so educated and - " I felt dismay fill me again. "I'm not."

"You're young." She laughed again, and she sounded amused this time. "I can assure you Ivo was hardly the erudite professor at your age. He was hanging out in parks and toilets in London having sex and weeping to me about his lack of a proper love life. He flunked out of university and was working as an usher at the theatre, mostly so he could pick up boys. And then he was unemployed for a long spell. He slept on my couch for about three months. That's why he went back to school. Father agreed to support him if he did something with his life. Though why he chose paleontology - " she shook her head. "Sometimes I think he did it just to be a pig. Sort of 'Fine, I will cooperate but I will choose something so arcane, I shall never be employed.' Father was furious about it later. He never did understand him. He never could accept him, even after he became successful."

I realized I knew nothing about his family. "Is that why he doesn't see them?"

"Mother died last year. She's the one who had the most trouble with it anyway. She hated Kit as well." She laughed again. "I suspect Father would like to see Ivo. He asks about him every time he writes. I would have mentioned it but - "

But Ivo was busy worrying about me. She didn't need to speak that part aloud. I already knew it.

"I didn't know," I said quietly. In fact, I knew nothing about Ivo. I knew Isabel because he had sent her to spy on me. And I knew Danny by accident. "Why did you come to Juneau?" I'd wanted to ask that for a long time and it seemed the night for confessions.

"Ivo was worried about leaving you alone. You were so young and impetuous and it's a rough town. I knew it from all the times I'd been there with him. He thought I might be an escort for you. Keep you entertained and out of trouble," she shrugged apologetically.

"Keep me out of trouble," I repeated bitterly. Yes, that sounded like something Ivo would say. I was torn between feeling angry over his controlling ways and feeling sorry for what had happened to him. And Danny. In the end I arrived at understanding. He was only trying to protect me.

"I always felt so inferior around him," I confessed. "I hated going anywhere with him. We were fine at home but he was so different in public. I thought he was ashamed of me." I would have said more but her utter astonishment made her choke.

"Ashamed? He was prouder of you than anything else in his life. He couldn't wait for me to meet you. He spent so much time singing your praises. When he called to ask me to keep an eye on you, I warned him I might fall in love with you myself." She laughed again. And the she sobered, because of course I had fallen in love with her. Or thought I had. "I confess I did wonder if you were like Danny. I thought maybe that was what he saw in you. But as soon as I met you, I knew that wasn't the case."

"You loved Danny?" I could feel the poison of envy seeping into me.

"Very much," she said quietly. And then she bent down to kiss my forehead. "But I love you even more. Because you are here with us now."

That silenced me. I sat for a moment before deciding that what I felt was something near contentment. Isabel loved me and Ivo loved me. That was more than I had ever had in life.


	22. Chapter 22

_**Opposites**_

Ivo delighted in lecturing me, _instructing_me, telling me that I was "inscientious". My abysmal ignorance pained him. No one with as little scientific education as I should ever have been admitted to university. What were they teaching children in schools these days?

I might as well have been standing beside my Aunt Clarissa.

I tuned him out when he went on like that – doling out entirely too much information. I had no interest in the formation of glaciers millions of years ago. I didn't even try to explain that there was a poetic beauty to the natural world that did not require any explanation, that I did not need to understand something to admire it. They were breath-taking and brilliant in the sunlight and that was enough for me. It wasn't enough for Ivo who proceeded to tell me the temperature distribution in ice sheets, knowing full well I had never taken physics.

Had I been a brilliant poet or writer, I could have been his match, but the reality was he was far more poetic than I and much better read in my own field. He never looked blank when we discussed my area of expertise. He knew all the current literary criticism of contemporary and classic literature. He could drop the names of books and authors in a way that made me writhe in shame. He was even well-versed in the theatrical arts, killing whatever joy I might have discovered there. I was actually embarrassed for him to read anything I wrote. I knew that he would spent a good hour picking it apart, telling me honestly what was wrong with it - as he would any other student, as any other professor of mine might.

I didn't want that level of honesty with my lover. I wanted him to be in love with me, to admire me as much as I admired him. I was sick of being the underling, the protege, the woman in the relationship. I was sick of his stories and his accomplishments and his knowledge and his life. I wanted my own life. When I was unfaithful to him, it was my attempt to find myself – to escape his overbearing superiority.

I honestly had no idea why he even loved me. Or thought he did. It had to be sex but he could have had that just as easily in the clubs or toilets as he once did. He hardly needed to wear an albatross around his neck to get his dick sucked. I didn't cook for him or clean his house like a wife. I wasn't a companion - we couldn't go out in public anywhere as a couple. Most nights he spent reading or writing, barely interacting with me at all. After the first few disastrous attempts, he no longer took me with him to conferences; I would sit there bored out of my mind while a group of scientists talked about things I had never heard of and didn't want to hear of.

I knew why I loved him. What was not to love? He was clever and animated and passionate and wildly exciting to be with. I never knew what he might do – he had so many interests and was constantly on the move in search of more. He could be as savage as the prehistoric monsters he studied, as gentle as the waves lapping the shore, as unexpected as an avalanche.

Rereading Ivo's letters now, I have to laugh. "Did it never occur to you, idiot," and I can hear the tone of his voice, "that I love you simply because you are so very different to me?"


	23. Chapter 23

_**Parasites and artists**_

"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief"

~ U2, _The Fly_

Ivo was rarely consoling. He seemed to feel it was his personal duty to daily deflate my ego as if concerned it might otherwise grow out of control. Determined not to be squashed by him, I would look anxiously for opportunities to show off something I knew.

"'I feel as if I dwell in the suburbs of your pleasure'," I complained bitterly, and while he laughed loudly, he didn't ask whose quote it was so I couldn't tell him about Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia.

I read furiously, seeking arcane references that would trip him up. I produced insignificant authors like potted plants, offering them up merely for their lack of readership. But he never rose to the bait, merely inquiring as to what I had liked about their work or what I felt was significant.

I got to a point where I spent so much time proving my worth to him, I completely lost myself.

"There's nothing original about me," I wept in his arms one day after Martin had delivered a particularly castigating review of my draft. "All I do is parrot other writers!" (Of course, I was parroting Martin there; he said, "All you do is parrot other writers, Tim!")

He buried his lips in my hair and I wondered fleetingly if he might kiss me. Making love with him invariably made me feel better, as if I did have some value.

"And how does that make you different from anybody else?" he asked softly.

"They have original ideas!" I despaired.

"Nonsense. 'Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief.' We all of us take other people's ideas and interpret them our own way and that is what makes us unique."

"There's nothing unique about me," I grumbled, blowing my nose on his handkerchief. But I already felt better.

He drew back a bit, arching his eyebrow in that nasty way before he said something scathingly sarcastic and his lip twitched as if it were all vastly entertaining to him. But the words that fell from his mouth were anything but harsh. "And here I was just thinking that you are beyond a shadow of a doubt the most unique person I have ever known." And he kissed me gently.

I was left to ponder that on my own.


	24. Chapter 24

**WARNING: References to underage sex and other mature themes. **

_**Childhood**_

He fled his home. If he never saw his mother again, it would be too soon. He had hated her all along, he realized. Hated her as a child when it was forbidden to hate one's parents. Hated her in his adolescent years when it was expected of him. Hated her especially after his father's death, when she needed him most.

He hated her for her petty social ways. Hated her for her lack of interest in him. Hated her for failing him one hundred percent.

He hated her for accepting shallow truths. Hated her for admiring scarcely camouflaged corruption. Hated her inability to see what was right under her nose. Oh how she had admired James! Such an accomplished young man! Such a lovely family!

He hated her for not protecting him. He'd always wanted to ask her how she'd feel about James if she knew that he had fucked her little boy, been fucking her little boy for years in fact. The first time he'd been about eight years old and barely able to walk for a solid week. He'd screamed and begged him to stop, but James was not one to be put off. He'd fucked little Timmy daily, sometimes twice daily, whenever he pleased.

And how would Mummy feel about that?

He hated her for being oblivious. An ostrich with her head in the sand beaches of Southern France.

Who was she, this woman who had given birth to him, to question his character? Who was she to feel disappointment in how he had turned out? Who was she to make demands on him? How dare she? She was just some mindless fuck for his father. _He_ had been born of a more honorable generation. Gentlemen all. Men who married self-centered fools. Well, more fool he. Tim Cornish wouldn't be caught dead shackling himself to anyone. His generation was smarter. They weren't concerned with decorum. He'd fuck whomever he pleased, whenever he pleased.

That he should have to be responsible for _her_, his own mother! The bitterness of having to care for someone who had never cared for him was more than he could endure; the injustice of it all weighed heavily in his angry young heart, feeding a savagery he did not know he possessed. He wished she would just die so that he could get on with his life. The blood vessel in his finger popped he clenched his fists so hard.

The train rolled on, away from that bright and desolate place.

Never had he been more grateful for the sanctuary of his school. Never had he needed refuge from his family more.

It was in this state of upheaval that he returned to Warwick and fell into Emily's waiting arms.


	25. Chapter 25

**********Danny Reyes appears courtesy of Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. **

_**Of ghosts and closets**_

Isabel had known Danny. That hurt terribly the fact that Ivo had introduced him to her but I had been sent away, had had to discover her on my own. Of course he lived in Canada then. It was an easier trip. But from the photos I learned that Danny had traveled everywhere with him to conferences in Iceland and India; on research trips to Wyoming and Alaska; to visit friends in Seattle and London. Kissing one another in public, arm in arm on the beach, all dressed up for the opera. Danny with his extraordinary good looks and puckish expressions. Ivo simply content to belong to him.

The people and places were carefully documented in a small, neat script on the back of every photograph. Some say you can tell a lot about a person from their handwriting. I spent hours comparing Danny's to mine to see whose was superior. I had not applied myself in school, far more interested in what I was writing than the manner in which I wrote it. Ivo says I am terribly sloppy and should strive not to regard everything in my life as a battle, that conformity can be a positive thing if viewed from another angle. I can hear the unspoken accusation: Danny wasn't sloppy. Danny had tidy handwriting. He probably wrote amazing letters as well. They probably wrote eloquent witticisms to one another when they were apart.

If they were ever apart.

I tried to tell myself it was entirely my fault I had no collection of photographs with Ivo. I hadn't wanted to go anywhere with him though he always invited me. _Except that first summer_. I wondered if Danny had had to spend his first summer away from Ivo. The evidence suggested otherwise. I looked at the young boy, smiling serenely at a table of scholars twice his age. He was either very sure of himself, or very stupid. I couldn't imagine Ivo with anyone stupid; he didn't have the patience for it. I'd always felt so horribly out of place in those settings, humiliatingly beneath those towering intellects. Danny didn't appear to notice that he wasn't their equal, didn't appear to care.

Ivo looked different, too. Ten years hadn't simply aged him, they had fundamentally altered him. The hungry, mad, world-weary look I assumed had always been part and parcel of his character wasn't there. He was still straight and lean, elegant in whatever attire he wore; but he was healthy tanned, rested, relaxed. Happy.

He was happy then. With Danny.

I wished I had known him then, that I had been Danny. I tortured myself looking at the photographs of them with various people in various places. How much they had seen and done together. How many blissful memories they had. I thought that I, too, might have had that interesting life with Ivo, been able to say, "Oh do you remember that time the tourists were almost eaten by the grizzly in Juneau?"Do you remember when so-and-so was attacked by the kangaroo?"To think we were swimming in shark-infested waters!" I could have made myself interesting by association. I could have made myself his equal with those experiences. I could have had something to write about.

Envy and regret washed over me in waves. Hatred for a boy I never knew, depression at the loss of a life I could _should_have had, nausea from lack of sleep and sustenance ravaged my body until I was so physically sick I couldn't get out of bed. Still I pulled the cigar box out from the drawer every day and thumbed through his memories, another round of torture to further damage myself.

Danny and Ivo camping in the Alaskan wilderness in the summer of 1984.

Danny and Ivo sailing off the coast of Australia in December of that same year.

Danny and Ivo with friends at their home in Wolfeville in Spring, 1985.

_Danny and Ivo._  
**  
**Danny and Ivo.

I hated the boy who had had Ivo before me. And I was desperate to know everything about him.


	26. Chapter 26

**Warning: SLASH!**_**  
**_

_**After it, therefore because of it**_

"Is this the first time you've been with a man?" Ivo murmured in my ear.

"No," I answered truthfully, wanting more of his touch, more of him.

"How long?" he persisted, knowing that I had been seeing women of late.

"It's been awhile," I confessed, reluctant to tell him my history.

He chuckled but not meanly. "It will hurt a bit then."

I nodded. I knew it would.

He was a considerate lover, preparing me carefully with his tongue and fingers before introducing his cock into my very tight hole. I honestly couldn't remember the sensation from before, couldn't recall how terribly it had hurt with James, until that moment.

He entered me and I cried out, the burning sensation worse than I remembered. But he kissed me and soothed me and made me want him even more so that when he pressed further, I simply groaned quietly. Encouraged, he began to move in me, his hand gripping my head, his mouth kissing and whispering reassurances to me.

The pleasure was entirely his and I felt his movements quicken. He was excited and seeking his own satisfaction. I had an odd moment of depression, despair even, realizing how very much he was like every other man who fucked me, wanting to satisfy his own desires. I had wanted him to be different, to care about me, to see how much it hurt me, how great my sacrifice of love was. Tears stung my eyes and it was all I could do to choke back the sobs forming in my gut.

To my surprise, he stopped abruptly, feeling the resistance in me. He withdrew, kissing my hair and stroking my back with his strong broad hands.

"Am I hurting you?" came the incredible words from his mouth. I could only nod dumbly. But just as quickly I realized I still wanted him inside of me, for all the pain it caused. "I should have gone slower," he apologized. "I should have waited until you were ready."

I wanted to cry out that I was ready, that I _chose_this, that I wanted it but I felt ill and was shaking and I thought I might shit all over his clean bed if I stayed there one minute longer. I crawled out from under him to the toilet where I sat, crying because the entire thing had been such a disaster and I wished I hadn't come. I had thought... I don't know what I thought. That somehow that magical moment one sees in film would happen in my life, that Ivo was somehow that one to make it all better. I wept from disappointment and grief and humiliation.

He left me alone until I had finished and came back to his bedroom to stand awkwardly, passively. I thought I should dress and leave. _Flee_. I never wanted him to see me again. I felt like a fool. More so because I had been the one to initiate it.

"Come lie down," he said softly. "You probably still feel a bit sick. I'll get you some water."

I stood stupidly before him.

"Come," he held out his hand and I obediently took it and lay down.

And that was just beginning of our very confusing relationship.


	27. Chapter 27

_****_**Warnings for references to sex and violence.  
**

_**Exquisite Brutality**_

Dr. Ivo Steadman, 41, lecturer in Paleontology at the University of Warwickshire, was a study in exquisite brutality. Aloof and controlled, he occupied his every waking hour in academic pursuits. Having no apparent social life, he was a logical candidate to represent his department on every committee, at every conference, and he readily accepted those assignments with the same polite indifference he gave his lectures, greeted his colleagues, and ordered his dinner. An enigma, those acquainted with him had long since given up trying to figure him out. He was closed shut, locked up in a complex pattern that would have drowned Houdini.

Which, of course, is what Tim loved about him. The fact that before they had exchanged a single word, Ivo had kissed him - transmitting more of his true self in that simple act than in a lifetime of words. Tim understood him, knew that beneath that inscrutable facade was a live wire seeking a conduit.

Never were two beings more perfectly coupled. Tim had been a living dead man, passionless, polite. Under Ivo's skilful touch he exuded sexuality from every pore. No one else could arouse him, satisfy him as Ivo did. None could tap into his core, fill the void that dwelled deep inside as Ivo's mere presence did. None could leave him spent, relaxed, at peace with his troubled world as he was with Ivo.

Ivo would throw him down, use and abuse him with complete disregard for Tim's comfort or needs. And when the boy lay broken on the bed, Ivo would scoop him up and make love to him in the most tender and considerate manner. Some mornings he hauled him rudely from bed and kicked him out, saying company was expected. Others he would bring him a tray of coffee and pastries and play with his hair until it was time to eat again.

Sometimes Ivo would take him on one of his road trips and they would talk in an animated and exhilarated way. Sometimes Ivo would finish fucking him and leave the apartment without a word.

Rape and romance, sex and intimacy - it was wildly exciting never to know where one stood. Ivo required him to think, to work for the relationship, something he had never had to do. The others came to him groveling. Ivo left him begging.

He tried ever ingenious means to provoke the man, drawing him out, testing him. When Ivo struck him, he rejoiced - he had gained some footing in the game. When Ivo wept, he withdrew - terrified. To have the only thing in his world he could not control succumb was more than he could bear.

Tim Cornish, 22, undergraduate student in Creative Writing, was a wreck. The man he loved now loved him back.


	28. Chapter 28

**Warning: EXPLICIT M/M SEX!  
**

_**Lovers**_

Can it have only been 13 hours? My hands shake slightly as I pick up my assigned book to read. It's going to be a long night, our very first apart since this started. I wonder what he is doing in his hotel room, if he is thinking of me. I wonder if he is picturing me here in his apartment – lounging desultorily on his couch, humming in his shower, eating his food in his kitchen.

I am wearing his clothing now – his leather jacket, his shirts that are baggy on me, his thick socks that keep his feet warm. I masturbate in his bed – imaging him on top of me, inside of me, holding me down while he pleasures himself. I feel him wrench my head back and bite my neck, a sign of his dominance, of my total submission to his desire.

He fascinates me – every book, nook and cranny of his physical existence. I spend much of my time exploring his apartment, pretending that we are married. How would I sign my name? Blokes aren't allowed to marry.

I sit in his chair, smoke his cigarettes, read his daily planner. I touch myself again, wrapping his scarf around my face, imaging it is him. I think of him lifting up my shirt, his mouth trailing wet kisses down my torso. His slender hands work at my belt. I feel him tongue my piss slit, lick my shaft, nuzzle my balls.

The phone rings and I jump. I don't answer it. I am not allowed. If he wants to call me, he will call me but probably it will be much later – he won't get a chance during the day as lectures go back to back and he has friends to catch up with. I listen to the recorded message. A colleague reminds him of their meeting next week. I'd love to be there, to hear him when he is in his professorial mode. I've never even seen him in class. I am forbidden to come to his office. I'm not allowed in that world.

But here, in the secrecy of his apartment, here he is all mine. In just twenty hours and thirty-seven minutes (if the train is on time), he will walk through the front door. I shall be lying in his bed, day-dreaming of him. He'll pull me to him with his strong arms, kiss me tenderly before he fucks me hard. He'll probably fuck me with his clothes on because he has been away from me for more than 24 hours and he can't wait. I love it when he does that. He'll grab my hair to steady himself while he plunges in and out of me. Then we'll collapse, panting. I'll clench my ass, trying to hold him in me, but he'll wither and slip out anyway, leaving me empty. And then he'll kiss me again, to tell me how much he missed me, to show me how glad he is to be back home with me. He'll fold me in his arms and I'll fall asleep for real this time, happy to be his.


	29. Chapter 29

**AN: This was the first Ivo/Tim drabble I wrote and the narrator is Ivo. I determined upon its completion that Ivo was simply too complex to narrate and switched to Tim. This was when I first conceived of the idea that it is Tim, not Ivo, who gets injured. WARNING: EXPLICIT SLASH**

For Abby, who introduced me to the wonderful world of No Night is too Long 3

_**The Island**_

He's been out for a full day. I made the decision to stay on the boat, not to send for help from the mainland. I question that now but do nothing to change it. The medic thinks it's just a concussion but he made it clear he would prefer a second opinion. Fergus, the one who heads the cruise, discusses it with me once more, at length this time. I come clean and tell him the whole sordid story. He is my friend and offers his immediate support. We are moved to his secluded rooms and Tim sleeps fitfully in the large bed. I hold his hand and tell him how much I love him and how very sorry I am.

0o0o0o0

We had been fighting on the island. I had just finished my talk to the party and followed him a distance to speak with him. He demanded I leave him be. I said he was a fool if he thought I would just walk away and give him up without a fight. He turned on me, frustrated, wondering how I could still want him when he rejected me so completely. I told him I didn't believe he knew what he wanted; he was angry and frightened and confused and we needed time out of the pressure cooker to figure this out. He lunged at me, enraged, determined to harm me but I was quicker and deftly side-stepped, sending him sprawling head-first into a jagged rock. I remember rushing to him, calling his name hoarsely, but he was already unconscious. I radioed Fergus and we got him back to the ship.

0o0o0o0

Three day on he still drifts in and out of lucidity. He knows me and permits me to spoon feed him bits of my own dinner. He can't walk by himself to the toilet and I help him. I also bathe him and situate him comfortably in the bed. I hold him much of the time, gently rocking him. He clutches my shirt and cries out periodically, either from pain or nightmares. I don't really care which it is. I love the fact that he needs me.

The week passes and a second cruise is underway. My duties are more frequent but Fergus has brought an additional staff member on board to help with Tim. An older, experienced nurse, she takes over many of the menial tasks of his care so that I am able to focus on the two of us when we are alone. I kiss his hair and stroke his back and long for the day when we can be intimate again. His head hurts badly and he still needs rest but one day when I am holding him, he gets an erection and I know it won't be much longer.

How gentle I will be with him this time. How tenderly I will make love to him. Nothing like the horrific violence of our last session together. I still cringe at the memory. I'll ease into him, letting him adjust to my length before I even think of my own needs.

I want _need_to reclaim him in the wake of all that has happened.

0o0o0o0

He can walk now and feed himself. I still tend to his bathing, quite possibly because it is such an enjoyable task. I run the sponge across his chest and long to tongue his nipples. I see his cockhead, erect, peeking out from the bubbles and I reach down to give it a tug. He rewards me with a moan and a few small thrusts and I can barely walk back to the bed, my own dick is so sore and swollen.

0o0o0o0

The second cruise comes to an end but Fergus permits us to stay on board, even offering to allow us to use the vessel for the interim. I'm touched by his devotion and after bullying him into accepting three weeks of my pay in exchange, we set off for four full days. We drift aimlessly on the ocean and I take him up on deck to see the whales. He is still weak and requires my hand to steady him, especially on deck, but he is slowly coming back to life.

I can't wait any longer.

0o0o0o0

He lies quietly under me as I press into him and then the only sounds are the occasional grunt or moan while I pleasure myself. My cock is huge from a month's deprivation and I wonder that he can manage me at all. He's so tight and I am ready to explode. It takes everything I have to put it off and allow him to relax under me so that his anus stretches, permitting me to penetrate him fully. I gasp as I push myself all the way in, feeling the barrier of his prostate. He shudders in pain or pleasure and I pick up my pace, poking him with my red-hot rod until my stomach clenches and my balls tighten and I can't hold it any longer. The first spurt of semen makes me cry out and I envision the white ribbon curling in the cavity inside of him. If he were a woman, it would attack his egg and he would bear my child. As it is, the first release is followed in quick succession by more and more until I collapse, spent, on top of him, unable to hold myself up.

I am still panting when he drifts off to sleep, seemingly content that my half-erect cock remains inside of him.

0o0o0o0

He's able to recall what happened but he doesn't question it. The uncomfortable memories get buried as I busy myself with his shaft and balls, pleasing him in ways he never imagined. We talk now of the end of summer, of returning to England and what we will do. He will move in with me officially, register his new address at the post office now that school is finished for him. He wants to write and I offer to support him while he tries his hand at a novel or two. He is grateful and I fuck him a little harder that night, reminding him of the hand that feeds him.

0o0o0o0

Back in England we unpack and I fuck him leisurely in what is now our bed. I still have to go into the office and start preparations for my fall courses and I grumble appropriately about it. He asks if I would bring him the schedule for the Performing Arts Center as there may be something he wishes to see and I promise I will, pinning him briefly against the wall to bid him adieu until that evening. I bite his neck hard and remind him to keep his cock in his pants until I - and I alone - take it out. If he doesn't, I warn, I'll chop it off. He closes his eyes and leans against me, the perfect picture of subservience.

"Of course," he replies passively.

Very satisfied, I walk out the front door, eager for the day to be over so that I can be back home with him.


	30. Chapter 30

_Change  
The river is blocked  
The road is hot  
The sky is blazing  
Black smoke on the rise  
The weather rolls until it's on you and suddenly breaks _

~ _Breaking the yearlings_, Shearwater

**Warnings for gang rape and underage sex**

When I was 10 I was taken by a group of fifth form boys behind one of the abandoned buildings near the lake. They came for me mid-morning on a Saturday. The looks on their faces told me all I needed to know.

I had heard of such things and knew what to expect. My friend Craig had experienced the same thing one week earlier. His initiation was just one of a spate of these group outings. Perhaps it was because it was Spring and the mating season for all animals had begun. Perhaps it was because we were now deemed old enough for the experience - yearlings ready to be broken. Perhaps it was simply a school tradition which, like so many others, lacked both rhyme and reason.

James led me away from the safety of the school. He squeezed my smaller hand in his larger one. Several times he glanced at me, once lifting his hand to stroke my shoulders and run his fingers through my hair. He smiled at me but I saw that he was nervous as well and that frightened me more than the other boys and what they were about to do to me. We came to a little clearing in the forest and he led me to the center, kneeling down to undress me slowly, kissing me and stroking my chest while the others watched in silence. He tasted of toothpowder and tobacco, tastes I normally liked. But that morning I didn't want him to kiss me. That morning I felt like he was betraying me. Whatever he and I "had", he was soiling it by offering me up to his friends, like a lamb to the slaughter.

I kept my eyes fixed on him, terrified that if I looked at the others I would start to cry. He played with my shriveled willie, prodding between my legs to finger my tiny hole and stretch it. He smiled at me again to steady himself and I smiled bravely back. This is just the way it is, we all told ourselves at Leythe. This is just what happens in life. This was just one of those things you accepted and got on with, like a death in the family or the end of a friendship.

I knew it would hurt terribly. I had seen Craig return crying and limping, unable to sit for a day. I would be bruised and torn and I wouldn't want to eat. I would vomit and grow feverish. Worse, I wouldn't be allowed to ask the steward for cream or a pill to help mitigate the pain. It would get the others in trouble and I would be labeled a 'snitch' and bullied the rest of my time. I would simply have to bend over and take it and try not to cry too loudly.

Ivo once remarked that I was the type to sleep with the enemy rather than fight back, that I always made it a point to appease others even when I wanted to shout at them or strike them. I cannot help but wonder if that character trait was developed during those formative years at Leythe, those formative experiences with the older boys. What possessed me - to act as if not only did I enjoy it but _craved_it? To speak to each of them while they violated me, whispering to them, moaning in faked pleasure for them, begging for more of it? Why did I contrive an ecstatic response when it wasn't expected of me?

Why? Because although the pain was there, somehow my mind convinced my body it should enjoy the experience, that it would be better for me if I did. And to my utter surprise, I found over time I was able to summon the emotion. I was a born people pleaser. And for the first time I felt that in this position I was wanted. Needed.

_Loved_.

Simply for being cute and cooperative.

They took me repeatedly, one after the other, until the spruce needle floor was slick with their semen and my poor little hole swollen beyond recognition. I wouldn't be able to defecate for days. James had me one last time, the last for that day, kissing me softly and whispering his love for me, promising me things from home when he returned on Monday - sweets and cigarettes and money. The other boys watched, promising me things as well in the hopes that they might be able to coax me back into the forest on their own time.

I smiled to myself as I listened to their panting, watched their hands work away at their adolescent cocks. Yes I did enjoy it. Not because it aroused any desire in me. Oh no. Not that. But because I realized that for all that pain, there was something there much more rewarding than sweets or cigarettes or money.

I held them in my power.


	31. Chapter 31

**DISCLAIMER: Danny Reyes belongs to Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. **

_See me, feel me, touch me, heal me. _

~ Tommy, The Who

_**Paper Planes**_

I wasn't the only one with a thing for older men. The age difference between Danny and Ivo wasn't as great as mine but indisputably he was the type to fall for his teacher. I didn't understand until later that like my own proclivity his was rooted in his childhood experience.

Danny's mother died of cancer when he was nine but his father had begun to visit his bed at night in search of consolation long before then. That he disliked _dreaded_ the touch was obvious. But he wasn't afraid of the man. He needed him – without the financial support his dreams would have been shattered. Like me, Danny had learned from an early age to manipulate his unpleasant situation, rendering his impotence advantageous. His father would stagger drunkenly down the hall to his room, fuck him and fall asleep. Danny would use the opportunity to clean out his wallet. By the time he was 18 and ready for college, he had more than five thousand dollars saved. Even during the school year he made it a point to return home regularly to ensure that his father continued to pay his tuition. As well as to appropriate some spending money.

We were, the both of us, fine hustlers - on a par with the Artful Dodger or Our Lady of the Flowers.

Did that make us immoral? Amoral? Anti-social? We were children, getting by the only way we knew how, feral animals making our own way in a lawless brutal society. Does a child have an understanding of morality? They only know what they are taught. We were clever boys, making the rules of the game on our end.

How can a child be inherently evil?

I see now that Danny's and my lives were parallel, each placed in unhappy circumstances, each given the opportunity to heal in Ivo's careful loving hands. I wonder if he fought as I did, resisted help, was dragged kicking and screaming to that state of inner peace? I suppose only Ivo knows that.

And he's not telling.


	32. Chapter 32

_**Blackberries in Fall**_

If Danny had entered the relationship with no more intention than simply passing the class, how shocked he must have been to find himself madly in love with Ivo on the other side. But even the most Machiavellian of beings would have fallen for Ivo. I, for instance, was smitten before he ever spoke a word to me. There was something about him – something different in the ordinary.

I imagine them living together – Danny slovenly, Ivo tidy; Danny subsisting on fish and chips, Ivo picking blackberries and apples from the garden for dessert; Danny angry, restless and bored, Ivo sitting on the couch quietly reading John Muir or _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_.

I suspect they had shouting matches as Ivo and I did – Danny desperate to provoke him for attention. Was Ivo more patient or less in those days?

One thing I do know is that Danny changed over time, his rage fading as his needs were met. Ivo provided it all – love, money, encouragement.

_Security_.

It is rather hard not to blossom in that setting. After all, I too had laid my demons to rest with Ivo's patient ways.

I used to ask myself what Ivo had done to deserve us. We laugh about it now but it had to be hell at the time. He says he had no intentions one way or another – Danny walked into his class and I walked into the elevator. He just assumed that was how love happened – leave the back door open and see who shows up. He was very much of the "love the one you're with" philosophy; once he found someone, he simply made it work. "Once one is in a relationship," he told me pointedly, "one stops looking."

Perhaps that was my problem. I always assumed that once you got what you wanted, you moved on to something else. Ivo's way seemed too –

_Simple_?

_Plain_?

_Old-fashioned_?

I wasn't sure what word I was looking for. I had assumed love had to be turbulent, the way it was when we first met. I thought stomach aches and head aches and heart aches were all part of it. I couldn't imagine that a placid existence could _**would**_ make me happy.

How very wrong I was!


	33. Chapter 33

_**Over the Wall pt 1**_

_There's something to be said for you_  
_ And your hopes of higher ruling_  
_ But the slug on my neck_  
_ Won't stop chewing_

~ "Over the Wall", Echo and the Bunnymen

* * *

"Let's talk about that," Stan said in his best Psychiatrist voice.

"Leythe?" I was taken aback. I wasn't quite sure how one talked about _that_.

"Yes, you said that was your first sexual experience."

"I was just a kid," I laughed. I had a suspicious feeling I wasn't going to enjoy this discussion any more than yesterday's.

"How old?" It was just a question, the sort of information gathering he always did but at that moment it felt like intrusion.

_Invasion_.

"I dunno, eight, nine, somewhere around there," I shrugged. _Liar_. I knew exactly how old I had been. Eight years two months five days. I'd thought about that day every day for a long time.

"Do you remember it?"

"Yeah," I shrugged again but I was starting to feel very uneasy. This was something I had never talked about, not even with the other boys at school. This wasn't something anyone else would understand.

"What happened?"

I hated it when he was clinical like that. It made me want to throw the table at him. Like, how the fuck could he be calm all the fucking time? Did he take meds to make him like that? I wanted some of those. "Uh, I was one of the prefects' boys. They all had one." I reached for a cigarette. "His name was James," I offered.

"How old was James?"

"Fifth form so, I dunno, what's that? Fifteen, sixteen? Something like that." I lit the cigarette, my shaking hand giving me away. I wanted to burn Stan with it. After I threw the table at him.

"So quite a bit older than you."

Obviously. I nodded again.

He waited patiently, looking at me with that placid inscrutable expression that gave nothing away.

"What do you want to know?" I laughed nervously.

"What did the encounter entail?"

"It wasn't 'an encounter'. I was his the whole time he was there."

"When you say 'his', you mean he was a boyfriend?"

"No. Yes. I mean, I was his lover."

"How did he treat you?"

"He was good to me," I said readily. "He bought me things. He wrote really lousy poetry for me. " I burst out laughing and quoted the end of one: " 'Though you may turn my dreams to dust and truth to lies/I'll drown my pain in your unfathomed eyes.'"

Stan laughed too. "What sort of things did he buy you?" He asked.

I shook my head. "Um, chocolates and sweets. And he gave me a scarf once," I remembered all of a sudden. "He gave me money."

"What did you spend it on?"

I shook my head again. "More sweets, I guess," I laughed loudly. What had I spent it on? It wasn't as if he gave me all that much. It just meant I had pocket change when I went into town or went home.

"You say you were lovers. Did he kiss you?"

"Yeah, of course," I felt uncomfortable again.

"Did you like it?"

Damn Stan. He always had a way of asking things that made you think things you didn't want to think about. "I guess. I dunno."

"Did he kiss you often?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, I was the one who waited on him."

"'Waited on him'?"

"Each of the prefects had a boy who did things for them – brought them their tea and what not."

"So you spent a lot of time in his room?"

"Yes."

"You were alone with him in his room?"

"Most of the time, yeah."

"Did he do more than kiss you when he was alone with you?"

"What do you think?" I asked angrily. Stan already knew what went on. Everyone knew, even those who weren't chosen for it. I felt no need to go into the details.

"What did you think when he touched you?" He continued in a neutral tone.

I was still trying to get control of my anger. I hated him more than I imagined possible. What was I supposed to say? "I don't know," I said finally.

"Did you like the attention?"

Of course I liked the attention! I spent all my time playing coquette to make James want me. "It was just something that everyone did, alright?" I said coldly.

"Did you know other boys who were being abused?"

The use of that word threw me. I literally staggered in my chair. "Abused?" I choked. "We weren't abused. We just normal kids, doing what everyone else did. "

"Is that what you really think?" he asked quietly.

"Look, I get that you think that somehow this has made me uninterested in sex but the bottom line is it just wasn't traumatic. I did what everyone else did. I just got on with it. I just want to forget the whole bloody mess." My head was starting to ache.

"Alright," he said in that steady tone I was desperate to hear. My entire world was crumbling. "We can be done for today."

_We're done forever_, I thought and stormed from the room, furious.


	34. Chapter 34

**AN: In writing Shells, I have been struggling to compare and contrast the relationships of Danny/Ivo and Tim/Ivo. I felt that going back into Danny's childhood some might help. Hence this little series of Danny drabbles. Never fear – Tim shall be right back!**

**The very lovely Danny Reyes belongs to Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. He knows I am just borrowing him for the time being. **

_**Family Matters**_

Danny's father slipped on his boat and was pulled into the hauling rig. He was alone at sea, as always. Danny was the only one to fish with him and once the boy left for college, he never found a replacement. He was old and irritable and set in his ways. A most unpleasant unhappy man. No one would have wanted the job anyway.

When they found him they pulled out what pieces they could. To get the rest of them, they would have to remove the entire engine, one of them said. That was a job best left for the Mounties. They divided tasks amongst themselves – who would call whom. One of the men took it upon himself to call Danny; Stanley's wife was long since dead and there were no other children.

"Now that poor kid can finally have a life," one of the older fishermen said bitterly and they concurred in murmurs.

* * *

Ivo took Danny to Vancouver to meet his sister and brother-in-law. His parents had retired to Australia where his mother was slowly dying of cancer. Isabel went regularly to Melbourne to care for her; Ivo and his mother weren't on speaking terms though he dutifully wrote her every month to tell her of his comings and goings lest she start to care in her last gasp of life.

She had rejected him when she learned he was homosexual.

Isabel was an elementary school teacher. Unable to have children of her own, she found joy in caring for the children of others. She welcomed Danny the way she would any child in her third-grade class, hugging him, speaking warmly and calmly to him, seeing to his comfort and well-being. Danny told Ivo that night that he wanted to just move in and be adopted, he'd never met anyone so lovely in his entire life. He was sorely tempted to become heterosexual.

Ivo burst out laughing. He wasn't at all threatened. He knew Danny loved him more than anything in the world.


	35. Chapter 35

**AN: Danny Reyes belongs to Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. But I wish he were mine.**_**  
**_

_**Becoming Ordinary**_

When Ivo was with Danny, he wore suits and ties to class. He didn't feel he was at odds with society back then, he had no reason to rebel. To the contrary it was entirely in his interests to conform. Indisputably his sexuality was an issue socially and professionally, but it wasn't at all for him personally. Like most gay men of that era, he had accepted life in the closet and if he was bitter, he never expressed it. Obtaining a tenure-track position in the arcane fields of paleoecology and evolutionary biology was difficult and he was grateful to have landed a good job at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Becoming ordinary was a small price to pay for a bright future.

Danny however – of a younger generation and a harsher mold – seemed to revel in his identity as an outsider. Stigmatized in the consolidated schools by his poverty, rural roots and queerness, he felt nothing but antipathy towards his fellow man. He banded together with those few individuals who shared his contempt for "polite society" and spent his days in the editorial room of the school newspaper writing disturbing screenplays for shock effect, his nights in the town's abandoned park seeking solace in lonely sexual encounters. College had been a life line, offering him a ticket out of his miserable suffocating existence. He was ambitious, made ruthlessly so by his adverse upbringing. He never looked back to where he had come from, what he had been, focusing instead on making his mark in the future. Being ordinary was the last thing in the world he would ever want.

Until he met Ivo.


	36. Chapter 36

_**Apples and Tacos**_

Ivo had taken Gentlemen's Housekeeping (the masculine equivalent of Home Ec) in school to make him a well-rounded individual. In truth he adored cooking and approached the task – as he did all others – with tremendous zeal. He was accustomed to making supper for himself but once Danny moved in, he undertook culinary experimentation with an unbridled passion to rival the French masters. Relying entirely on his taste buds he would whip up dishes identifiable more by the unidentifiable elements in them than the converse. Dandelions and other grasses from the garden were added to salads; seaweed was substituted for spinach in vegetable lasagnes; raisins, shredded carrots and Grapenuts were added to ice cream. The conversation at the dinner table approached mutiny on the sole other resident's part.

"I'm not eating that," came the daily objection as Ivo laid the plate in front of Danny.

"You don't even know what it is yet," replied Ivo mildly.

"My point entirely. I'm not eating anything I cannot readily identify," he prodded the large-ish serving.

"Try some," coaxed Ivo, undeterred by his mate's resistance. "I assure you there is nothing in it you cannot readily identify."

Danny scowled at him and took a smallish bite before grimacing. "Ugh! What is that?"

"Apple tacos," said Ivo primly, settling himself to devour his portion.

Danny's expression was priceless.


	37. Chapter 37

_**Falling in love with the wrong person**_

Losing Danny had more than hardened Ivo. In his determination never to risk his heart again, he became almost unrecognizable - plodding through life at the pace of a sloth where once he had been heated, vibrant, dynamic. He was indifferent in his teaching requirements; dispassionate in sexual activities; desolate in his own home. He met twice weekly with his only friend at Warwickshire, Martin Zeindler, for a collegial _impersonal_ dinner. He flew to his sister's home in Vancouver for perfunctory visits during holidays. Over time he developed an interest again in his research and took to lecturing on cruise ships in Alaska to combine familial visitation with research, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

He did not allow anyone to penetrate the thick shell of his exterior. In fact, he was so closed-minded on the subject of forming another romantic alliance that his announcement left both Martin and Isabel apoplectic.

"Come again?" said Martin peevishly. Old age had made him hard of hearing and miscommunications like these left him put out.

"**_WHAT?_**" Isabel's tone was two octaves lower than usual and her gentle demeanor had vanished entirely. She rather thought her brother had just lost his mind.

"He's an undergraduate in Martin's program," replied Ivo somewhat breathlessly. He already knew he was in love. He had all the symptoms – insomnia, heart palpitations, reduction in attention span for anything that did not involve sexual fantasies with aforementioned student.

"You were so cold and indifferent at home," protested Tim years later as they all sat around to reminisce. "I thought you didn't care a thing for me!"

Ivo laughed with the others but he didn't tell Tim the whole truth. That would have done irreparable damage.

You see Ivo knew from day one that falling in love with Tim was a mistake.


	38. Chapter 38

_**Side Effects**_

Ivo said they were hallucinations, side effects of going off my meds without proper supervision. Withdrawing from any drug was the same - prescription or illicit. That was why I felt sick and couldn't sleep. If I went back on my meds, I would be fine.

But Isabel believed me. She explained to me that Danny was a troubled spirit, trying to communicate with me to ease his suffering, to help him find closure. He had been snatched from this life unexpectedly, violently. Murdered souls were unable to move on to the next world, they were left to wander aimlessly – angry, deracinated, disembodied. Danny was haunting me because I was the closest thing he had to Ivo. Ivo would never admit to spirits. Ivo was a man of science. He would say it was a hallucination. Which is what he did say...

I might have been shell-shocked by her profound belief in the supernatural had it not been for that one word spoken without any emphasis or warning.

_Murdered._

Danny had been murdered.


	39. Chapter 39

_**Triage**_

I find myself reflecting on the fact that personality traits affect us differently in different situations. When I first met Ivo, his organization skills left me a little breathless – truly he was the most efficient _the strongest_being I had ever encountered. That he could manage his research, teaching and social obligations and still have time left to play made me envious. I was lucky to get my assignments turned in on time. I was awed his ability to accomplish so much in such a short time with so little apparent effort.

By the time we were in Alaska that proficiency was to my mind the single feature that damned him irretrievably and made me determined to get away from him. He was too orderly, too thorough, too perfect. I didn't care how the fucking safety vests were to be returned to the rack when we got off the raft. Did it honestly matter? Did he really believe such things had significance in our lives? I loathed him.

When the moment came, when I reached my breaking point, I called Isabel but it was Ivo I really wanted. I knew that in that helpless state I needed someone to take charge. Like triage on the battlefield, Ivo would step in and assume command of the situation - issue orders and designate what needed to be done. Ivo would take care of me, a nurse in charge of a patient. I knew I could count on him, on his readiness and capability. And how very much I craved his controlling ways then!


	40. Chapter 40

_**Walking on Ice**_

In Alaska, Ivo took me to walk out on the ice. We went by helicopter to the Mendenhall Glacier. We went with people he knew professionally which meant that we didn't have to go the tourist route and walk from the Pavilion parking lot to the edge of the lake like everyone else. We got to land directly on the glacier and walk across it. We got to stand over the pools of pristine blue water and peer straight down into the bottomless depths where the aquatic ballet of life was in full swing – salmon and other fish darting from the pursuit of predators. Glaciers, Ivo told me, were dangerous due to the constant melting underneath. At any point a large section might break off, generating a surge so powerful it could break up the surface ice on which we stood and pull us down. If we did fall in, we would be lucky to survive more than fifteen minutes. The research team we were with knew the risks but also the warning signs and how to act appropriately in the event of "calving". And so I got to climb into an ice cave and explore inside, something Ivo had only done once before. He was very excited and spent much of the time chatting animatedly with a younger girl he knew from previous who addressed him respectfully as "Dr. Steadman".

In fact, such an opportunity comes once in a lifetime, if that. Mine was handed to me simply because of my connection to Ivo. He had asked to have me included and they had granted the unusual request with great alacrity, happy to help. They were charming to me, taking care that I didn't fall in or down or do something stupid. But what do I actually remember from that day? I vividly recall the excruciating headache I had from having drunk too much the night before. I remember seething with resentment that Ivo had once again hauled me off someplace he wanted to see. I remember rolling my eyes and making faces when he told me something, thinking he was being condescending and paternalistic. I remember feeling like a fish out of water, surrounded by scientists who lived for this sort of thing when I had no idea what to do with it.

I remember hating Ivo more with each passing minute.

I still cringe thinking of my childish behavior on that trip, a trip we had planned together. Ivo knew that glacier inside and out. He had spent years studying it and written numerous articles on its formation and change over time. He had even developed the lecture series for the Moraine Ecology Trail and the Trail of Time for the tourists. He was passionate about it and had wanted to share it with me. He wanted me to love that part of him – that most important part – as deeply as he loved every part of me, good and bad.

If this was a test of my love for him, I failed utterly. I sulked because I wasn't the center of attention, because my insatiable needs weren't being met. I wanted to stay in a better hotel. I wanted to be entertained at nice restaurants. I wanted him to figure out what I wanted even though I had no earthly clue.

I wanted him to give me something I could value, however one assigns value in life. He had offered me something far more precious and I had rejected it out of hand.

I'm more fortunate than most people. I have been given another chance to have those opportunities I wasted in the first part of my adult life. I don't know that I deserve it, but I try daily not to take anything for granted.


	41. Chapter 41

_**Childhood Home**_

Ivo and Isabel had no childhood home to speak of, so frequently did they move. Their peripatetic existence saw them in the Middle East, China, Brazil and Alaska. Their father was a geologist working for the oil industry, their mother merely his very unhappy spouse. Isabel said it had all the right ingredients for a miserable childhood but Ivo had somehow made it magical. He told her they were alien explorers, charged with the task of exploring the terrain. He drew elaborate maps of every place they went, noting the clothing of the inhabitants, the climate, the food, the housing, even the wildlife. He sensed his mother apathy – weakness – and assumed his imperious manner at a very early age. He would fix Isabel's meals when their mother was too depressed to get out of bed, supervise her baths and put her to bed. This was nothing short of remarkable given that they were twins and Isabel was actually older by forty-nine minutes. But such was Ivo's character. He was born to shepherd others and cut his teeth on his own sister.

After my mother died and I said that I supposed we would have to sell the house, Ivo surprised me.

"But it's your childhood home," he said quietly.

"If you can call it that," I replied. "I have no happy memories here."

"But you have so many memories! And how you view them over time will change. To lose this is to lose a part of yourself, who and what you are."

"It isn't like you have a childhood home!" I laughed, thinking him silly for being sentimental.

"I know," he said sadly, "I am so very envious of you."

That was the first hint I had that his strength was summoned rather than inherent, that he had faced things from which he would much rather have hid given the choice.

We kept the house.


	42. Chapter 42

_**That small blue-green planet**_

Ivo loved the earth in that incomprehensible way few people can, loved it as a mother loves her child. He was intimately connected to it, inextricably part of its complex processes. He understood its seemingly chaotic changes and welcomed its harshness as readily as its perfect symmetry. He was as at home on the arctic ice sheets as the city streets, the desert and the mountains, the ocean and the air. He loved the busyness of mankind, delighted in its technological gains and stared with the fierce pride of awe before the very real potential destruction of an ice berg.

He wasn't a thrill seeker; he didn't crave danger the way some do. He accepted the possibility of accidents as a fact of life, his own demise being no more significant than a baby bird falling from its nest or a deer being trapped in a ravine by wild dogs. He didn't fear death, he saw it as part and parcel of life and he would no more curtail living to avoid it than the penguins would call off their annual march to nesting grounds. Were he to fall, others would simply pick up where he had left off and continue on the path of progress.

This way of viewing life was so wildly different from anything I had ever known. While Ivo regarded man as just another animal, I had been raised to think of the world as something that belonged to us, something there for the taking. And while I was far from religious in any sense of the word, I had never questioned the existence of God. To Ivo this was worse than illogical, it was a form of backward thinking that belonged in the Middle Ages with the classic writers I studied.

In spite of the vast divide in our outlooks, he loved and accepted me. For him it was enough that our paths had crossed and that we were thrown together. It wasn't "fate" or some higher hand at work, he told me. It was just something random that happened the way random things always happen.

He then did something he had never done before, astonishing me in its simple intensity. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it softly. "And I am so very grateful it did," he whispered.


	43. Chapter 43

_**Writer's Block**_

I once groused that I would much rather be a scientist than a novelist as scientists never had think up things on their own. Writers, I groaned, were forever stricken with that career-terminating sickness, "writer's block".

Ivo cocked an eyebrow at me from behind his novel and I could tell he was valiantly stifling his laughter.

"What?" I argued. "It's true. All you have to do is figure things out. I have to make things up! You try writing a multi-chapter story!"

Of course he took the bait. "Alright," he said, marking his place in his book with a letter from his sister he intended to answer soon. "I shall tell you what I would write about were that to be my lot in life."

I would have thrown something at him but I was rather desperate for ideas.

"If I were to write a novel, I suppose I should like for it to be something along the lines of the Greek epic poems, but I should make mine the origins of planet Earth – how the many species evolved from a single cell developed in that steamy cauldron of elements that enabled life to begin.

"Actually, I might take a Michener approach and focus on one geographic locale over the span of time. Or maybe something along the lines of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, bits and pieces of narrative from different times and places.

"Anyway, I would describe the changes on the planet – climactic and structural – and how that impacted on the existing organisms. So many aspects of this era lend themselves naturally to story-telling: the burying of entire eras in floods and earthquakes and volcanoes. Continental drift literally changing the earth to become what we know today. I might even do it from the perspective of some timeless being who watches from above to witness the extinction of one group and the birth of another, perhaps an alien being or one of the ancient Egyptian gods." He was chewing on his pen, clearly enthralled with his concept.

"Ivo, that sounds just like 'The Rite of Spring' from _Fantasia_," I complained, none the better for having my hopes raised that he might provide me with a topic I could actually use.

"Oh. Yes I suppose it does, doesn't it? Well, mine would be a superior version." And he settled back to resume his novel.

I threw my book at him.


	44. Chapter 44

_**Don't Stand So Close to Me**_

**AN: The very lovely Danny Reyes belongs to ****Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. **

******And Ivo Steadman. :)  
**

He heard the gentle rap and looked up.

"Sorry," the student was smiling at him from the doorway, feigning nervousness at approaching his professor but his eyes betrayed him. They were steady, confident.

"You can come in." Ivo knew trouble when he saw it.

"Thanks." He was already sauntering toward the desk. "Danny Reyes," he held out his hand, again posing diffident but Ivo knew the game.

"I know who you are," he said shortly. As if he could miss the best looking boy in his ten am lecture.

"I wasn't sure," he couldn't hide his smirk. "I haven't been in before."

It was on the tip of Ivo's tongue to say he should have been in before as he was now failing the class but he was amused to see how far the boy would go; it had been a while since a student propositioned him, and never a boy.

"I've been having trouble on the quizzes and exams," Danny confessed sheepishly, letting his dark bangs fall over one eye in a way that flattered his face.

Ivo thought of the solid red line of failing scores in his grade book. 'Having trouble' was an understatement. "Hmmmmm," he replied neutrally.

"You said in class we could come in and talk with you," the boy reminded him.

Ivo suddenly needed reminding. He was starting to drown in the bottomless brown sea that was Danny's seductive gaze. "Mmmmm," he managed, wondering what sounds Danny might make if he touched him just _so_.

"So here I am," Danny said in a throaty way.

Ivo thought he looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary. He was quite certain the boy was gifted at swallowing things. The thought made his cock twitch and suddenly the room felt very close and still. He returned his pen to the top drawer of his desk and then realized he was still using it and took it back out. Damn the boy! He wondered if they could just fast-forward to the part where he went down on him. "Have you been keeping up with the reading?"

"Uh-huh," Danny said, leaving his lips slightly parted so that Ivo found himself focusing on the luscious pink meat, wondering how they would taste if he kissed them.

"And you answer all of the review questions at the end of each chapter?" They were perfect lips, smooth and full, a cushiony ride. Ivo tried to swallow discreetly.

"Uh-huh," Danny had leaned a little closer into the desk, reducing the distance between them.

Ivo could swear he felt his breath on the back of his hand. He could smell him, too – that delectable odor of boy: faint perspiration, sun-warmed hair, stale semen. He decided breathing through his mouth was safer. "So how can I help you?"

"I was hoping you could prepare me for the final," Danny murmured seductively.

Ivo wanted to pounce on him and fuck him senseless right there in the office. "The exam questions are taken equally from the reading material and the lectures," he said automatically but he was still lucid. _Thank God!_

"Uh-huh," Danny gnawed a little on his lower lip. Ivo longed to gnaw on it as well.

"So if you do the reading and attend all the lectures," he felt heat coursing through his body, that dizzy excited thunderous churning of blood rushing in his veins as he moved in for the kill, "you have everything you need."

"Mmmmm," Danny's eyes were limpid. Ivo felt like falling into them, drowning blissfully there. The boy looked down and then up again from an angle so that the lids hooded the mesmerizing pools, making them even more enticing.

"Is there anything else I can do?" He was young but played his hand like a pro, boldly meeting Ivo's gaze to answer any questions of availability.

"Study," said Ivo firmly and dismissed him.


	45. Chapter 45

**AN: **It's challenge time on Dreamwidth's** fic_promptly** which is why I am busy cranking out six drabbles a day. I have not abandoned _Shells _and will be returning to it shortly.

On another note, I am in the market for a beta if anyone wants to volunteer.

Thanks!

~ Pace is the trick

_**The Space Between**_

I don't know how or when Ivo figured it out, with Danny or with me. I can't imagine Danny told him. But he wouldn't have had to. Ivo's clever, he gets it on his own. Like me - he sussed it all out early on, he just never said anything to me about it.

Maybe it was Danny's reaction to his father's death. Maybe it was how he was in bed. They say adults molested as children have tell-tale signs. Did Danny withdraw during lovemaking? Did he cry? I used to drink myself into a stupor before sex with Ivo. It was the only way I could get through it. Ivo drank too but nowhere near as much as I did. He used to eye me quizzically when I stumbled downstairs hung over the next morning. But he never said a word.

Neither did he comment on my infidelity. At times I wished he had. At times I wished he would berate me, demand an explanation, force my hand. Would that have made it better or worse for us? I'm not sure. And I think that uncertainty was a risk he was unwilling to take.

So he wasn't at all oblivious to what was going on. He probably understood me better than I did back then. He simply felt it safer to let me muddle through on my own rather than make me choose.


	46. Chapter 46

**AN**_**: **_Warnings for graphic violence and major character death._  
_

_**Over the Wall pt. 2**_

I'd never actually seen someone beaten before let alone a murder. And I don't care what they say – no amount of exposure to television or cinematic violence can prepare you for the real ordeal. What I remember clearly now, some ten years on, are the little details: the snaps as his fingers were broken, the involuntary twitch of his legs, the sound his teeth made when force expelled them from his mouth and they hit the pavement, scattering like pearls from a broken string all around.

We'd climbed the garden wall, Danny and I, to watch his death. He took my hand and held it tightly, his cold bones burning my skin. I wanted to recoil but I felt for him - feared him - and knew I had to stay and bear witness to the event. He needed someone to see, to cry for him as they kicked the life from him.

Ivo's broken body lay a distance from the circle of action, his soft hair soaked in blood. I couldn't see his face from my vantage point but I imagined it well enough – his soft features torn apart. I cried hard for Ivo, wishing I could have spared him this.

Danny's body was still moving on the ground but whether intentionally – that resilience that had enabled him to survive so much – or from the impact of his attackers' blows I couldn't tell. One of the smaller brutes dragged him by his hair, jerking his head back grotesquely so that I could see his eyes and mouth – swollen shut from bruises. Another kicked him repeatedly in the groin so that his jeans were as bloody as his face. The jeers of the cowards who made up the audience – their cries of "Faggot!" and harsh triumphant laughter – whipped the killers into a frenzy. One of them lifted a lead pipe to smash his chest, shattering the ribs and stilling his troubled heart.

I watched the last wisp of life that was his spirit leave him and bowed my head to cry, grateful that it was over, that he hadn't lived any longer to endure more. I pulled my hand from his and wrapped my arms around him, trying to comfort him though I knew nothing could ever undo so much pain, such immeasurable suffering. He was quiet, leaning into me. It was almost as if the anger had left him now that he had me to mourn him. He kissed my throat with his cold dead lips and pulled back.

"Remember me," he said hoarsely, hopping down from the wall. It was the first time I had ever heard his ghost speak.

"I'll never forget!" I promised, still sobbing. How could anyone forget? I watched him fade back into the black.

And then I recognized the scene. I remembered where I had seen it before.

"Your film," I whispered after him, thinking of the death of the homosexual boy in the small town. "It was in your film!"

Then I knew that Danny had prophesized his own death.


	47. Chapter 47

_**Ivo**_

"What was it like," I asked Isabel, "growing up with Ivo?" We were peacefully situated under the starry night sky, relaxing with our post-prandial drinks. Ivo was busy washing up and making plans for our departure the next day so it seemed the last chance I might get to speak with her alone.

She said nothing for a long while and I wondered at her silence. I had never heard her at a loss for words.

"Have you ever walked a long way in really comfortable shoes?" she asked finally.

I thought the question odd but admitted to have done so. Ivo and I had hiked a great deal in Alaska. He had, of course, chosen my shoes for me – making certain that I had logged several miles prior to our departure so that they were broken in and ready for the rugged terrain we would encounter.

"Well, that was Ivo. Being with him was as easy, as comfortable as slipping into a well-worn pair of shoes."

I tried to imagine life with Ivo as "easy" and "comfortable". The adjectives themselves, to say nothing of the metaphor, floored me. "Oh," I said. I wasn't sure what else to add.

"You and he got off to a rough start," she sympathized. "It's so different for lovers. Trying to win the other over, keep them interested. Figuring out what can and cannot be said and done. Learning to trust each other. It's such a nerve-wracking thing, forming a relationship. I can't imagine why people are so eager to bail from one just to start another." She sounded just like Ivo. _'Love the one you're with.'_

I said nothing. I was one of those people, after all.

"Give it time, Tim," she laughed. "He'll let his guard down eventually."

I sat up to stare at her. "You think he is still guarded with me?"

It was her turn to be surprised. "But of course. Why do you think he never told you about what had happened?"

I lay back again. I didn't know Ivo? There was still more to come? I exhaled into the quiet of the dark, imaging walking a mile in a comfortable pair of shoes. It was a very pleasant thought, a perfect end to a perfect day.


	48. Chapter 48

_**Poetry**_

_My lover's words  
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses  
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme  
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch  
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun._

~ _Anne Hathaway_ by Carol Ann Duffy

How whimsical is human nature. How unreliable emotions. I first saw Ivo and was lovesick before I knew him. My body would ache when he was away from me – as intensely if only for a few minutes as for the whole of summer. I came to crave his touch, his gentle caresses, his savage kiss. But when the excitement and novelty of early love waned and I was left with the complex reality of our day-to-day relationship, even those physical pleasures could not entice me to stay. My return to him stemmed from need, not from want or volition.

Separated from him by necessity in the winter of 1995, I became once again the recipient of his passionate love letters. And oh how quickly did I fall once more into that deep well of sentiment we know as Romance. A letter becomes a means by which one can transmit the best of oneself, leaving the unadmirable to fall by the wayside. Had I considered him flawed beyond repair? I certainly could not imagine. Was it just yesterday that I criticized his dogmatic nature? I saw only a true and steadfast being, unwilling to bend with the vagaries of society. Did I once despise him as a sullen child resents the teacher? I marvelled that such an erudite man had claimed me in spite of my simplicity. Had I once found his passion for life wearing? I begged for it as the desiccated earth longs for rain.

Not one hour after his departure I was counting the seconds until his return, living on prayers and fear. And when the moment came, when I opened my eyes to find him smiling above me, the warmth of our love for one another promised to carry us through those mundane times.

For the pen of Cyrano de Bergerac is written in dead parchment for posterity but my lover's words are etched in my blood and each morning bring me to life.


	49. Chapter 49

_**Leap of Faith**_

Isabel married her sophomore year of college much to her brother's dismay. When confronted with an irascible Ivo on the phone, she tried to explain that she wasn't like him, that she didn't care what she did with her life so long as she had love.

"Oh, 'love'," he sneered, "What a marvellously outdated concept! You throw away all of your potential to shackle yourself to some brute who will saddle you with children and then leave you at some point in the future when he finds he 'loves' someone else!"

In spite of his admonitions she dropped out of college and married that spring in Paris. She married again upon returning to England to make it legitimate and then arranged a real wedding in Canada for the benefit of her parents who worried about things they did not oversee. Ivo attended all three as best man for the brother-in-law he didn't even know and remarked that she was the most married woman in history.

Isabel wasn't at all angry with him. She knew that his inability to marry had soured him on the subject and that his love for her would render any man she chose beneath his esteem. And in time Ivo did come to accept Kit Winwood, albeit reluctantly. Perhaps it was Kit's naturalness - his love for the outdoors - that won her brother over. Perhaps it was merely the fact that Kit accepted Ivo without reservation. Perhaps it was the fact that neither had a choice; they had to share her.

In 1984, the year Daniel Carlos Reyes became a sophomore, his lover Ivo called his sister Isabel to tell her he had decided to take a leap of faith and get married.

"Sort of. " The concept of gay marriage was a bit avant-garde.


	50. Chapter 50

**AN: If you find that you simply can't get enough of Tim and Ivo, whitwit is currently working on a multi-chapter fic, Pretty Boy which is a _No Night is too Long_ AU. And if you haven't seen the film with Marc Warren and Lee Williams, it is available for purchase in a format compatible with most countries' technologies. I know - I have the French one. :)  
**

**Happy reading!  
**

**~ Pace is the trick  
**

_**Be Apart of It**_

Isabel once surprised me by remarking that Ivo was such a social butterfly, it was impossible to keep up with him. He had so many friends she stopped visiting him. It was too exhausting to meet so many new people in such a short period of time. Because of course Ivo wanted her to meet _everyone_, he loved them all equally. He was in love with life - everything and everyone around him.

I was literally unable to respond. Ivo had never seemed a part of anything on more than a superficial level; "apart" of it was much more fitting.

But in college he had been in a theatre group and the president of the Cinema Society that promoted Astruc's 1948 manifesto of film as '(a) form in which the artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel.' (Yes, that would be Ivo's take on film. No wonder he loved Danny. I sighed enviously.)

He played rugby and chess, performed in rags for local charities and mentored young students who had potential but simply couldn't find their niche in one of the groups. He was a favourite with his professors, popular with his fellow students, and a frequent contributor to the college magazine's editorial page which won him an avid readership.

He was unlike anyone I knew. Or thought I knew.

Had he changed so completely since Danny? It was a rhetorical question. How could he not have changed, not have felt completely betrayed by the society he knew and loved? How could he not have become iconoclastic, anti-social even, in the wake of such violent rejection of his kind? Isabel said he had been so badly hurt he just shut down, stopped feeling anything for anyone.

Until me.


	51. Chapter 51

_**Stockholm Syndrome**_

_And I won't hold you back  
Let your anger rise  
And we'll fly and we'll fall and we'll burn_

~ _Stockholm Syndrome_, Muse

Poor Ivo. First Danny and then me. He was such a slave to his needs, but then aren't we all? I suppose I am no better or worse than he for needing me than I for wanting him. And I am not certain which of us was the greater victim, the greater culprit.

Still, falling in love with me had to his biggest mistake and I can't help but wonder if he ever regretted it. But no. He has stayed by me through thick and through thin. He came to love me so completely that as time went on, he actually began to adopt my point of view, seeing it as correct and just. That I was a consummate liar and thief - manipulative and selfish to the core, that I betrayed and rejected him - seemed only rational to him. He made excuses to himself for my behaviour – accepting me for all my wrongdoing because he loved me. I had had a difficult upbringing, been ignored by my mother and a sex toy in school. Of course I was depraved. He loved me and no matter how much I abused that love he was steadfast. He would not abandon me.

Never mind the fact that he had had it much worse. His mother rejected him outright when she discovered he was homosexual, refused to acknowledge him at his own sister's wedding. Never mind that his own lover had been murdered just for being gay; he was left with permanent injuries from the attack – diminished vision in one eye and the loss of one kidney. Never mind that he readily availed himself to help me heal. I was so absorbed with my own needs, I failed to ever consider his.

How odd that the worse off of the two of us took it upon himself to shelter the maltreater. Strange that the needier became the master.


	52. Chapter 52

_**The Death of Me**_

"And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. "

~ Eustace, _Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, C. S. Lewis

You know that point at which everything falls apart? The end of it all as you know it? It comes with a wrenching in your guts, a clanging in your head. It tears you to pieces and leaves you bloodied and broken, a stray dog hit but not killed on the side of the road. It flays you callously, efficiently - exposing nerves so that you are soon shocked senseless. You think _you hope _you are done but more peeling comes, deeper cuts into your flesh so that your very muscles are ripped away from your bones and you are just a slab of raw meat on the butcher's hook. The final blow, a snake's venom that paralyzes you, shuts down your lungs and heart so that you begin to suffocate leaves you helpless and in mind-numbing pain on the floor, wondering how long it will go on, how much you can endure.

You want to die, you wish you could die. It's agonizing and cruel, devastating and humiliating.

And then something strange happens. A liberation of sorts – a freeing of your soul so that you find new hope, new strength. You find you are clean underneath, the rotten layers that had been you lie in a heap behind you. You are pure and whole and shiny and fresh. You shiver but with excitement at what is to come, with longing to start anew. The world around you has changed. No longer a maze of greed and destruction, you see only clear pools and clean forests. The people have changed too – they are bright and good and hold out their hands in friendship. You step timidly into this new world, this new you, grateful and humble.

Thus it was that the death of me brought forth my new life when I confessed all to Isabel.


	53. Chapter 53

_**Nature's Song**_

I came across Ivo sitting on a rock alone in the clearing. He was staring raptly at the red columbine between his fingers, holding the delicate flower carefully in his steely hands. I knew he had not picked it, he would never have done such a thing. He would not have disturbed the bees attacking him, apologizing instead for disturbing them.

He was admiring the flower, the way a man admires a woman, makes love to her. He was speaking silently that unique language of appreciation – as tree speaks to stone and stone speaks to water. He did not hear me approach and would not have seen me come and go if I had not interrupted.

The noise startled him and he jerked involuntarily, ripping the head of the flower from its body. He looked at what he had done and I saw sadness on his face.

I felt like I had just committed murder.


	54. Chapter 54

_**And so it goes**_

Ivo hadn't expected me to stay. He figured it was infatuation, that I would move on soon enough. He had me pegged as a lightweight, living only for what I could get out of the moment. He knew the type and wouldn't allow himself to grow attached to me. When he felt he was in danger, he would withdraw, speaking to me as a tenant rather than a lover. The day after I moved in he disappeared for three days – the only sounds of him late at night when he came in and closed his bedroom door and early in the morning when he left again, closing the front door.

And so it went, he got on with his life as if my existence were superfluous. When he did see me, when I walked into the room, he spoke to me not as if we'd been apart for 72 hours but as if we were in the middle of a conversation. "Right, would you hand me that box?" gesturing towards it with his head. No greeting, no inquiry as to how I was or what I had been up to.

His aloof manner upset and hurt me. I was confused as to how after our passionate New Year's honeymoon I had become nothing more than "the student renting the smaller room". I wanted to confront him, to demand an explanation for his sudden indifference. Did he not still feel the heated desire that had bound us to one another not two weeks earlier? Had he already cooled toward me? Was I so tiresome to him? I was afraid of what the answer might be and held my tongue.

But then he would knock on my bedroom door, asking me if I wanted a drink with that look that left no doubt as to what would follow - violent lovemaking that tore my emotions and body asunder. Then he was off once again - returning first to his room and then to his office! I was at wit's end trying to comprehend what was happening to us.

When faced with the prospect of returning to Aldeburgh for Easter I panicked and threw myself at him.

"What is it you want, Tim?" He was sorting the slides in the overhead projector for his lecture the next day.

"I just want to be with you," I said, "and know what you are doing and where you are. I want to talk to you." I wanted something other than just sex, in other words. "I want us to have a relationship."

"Is that all? Not a very tall order," he laughed, but I saw a flicker in his eyes. He stopped laughing abruptly. "I see. You're asking for a commitment," and then added quietly as if he was afraid, "We shall have to see."


	55. Chapter 55

_**Breakfast in Bed**_

**WARNING: M/M EXPLICIT SEX**

I woke to the smell of fresh hot coffee and blueberry jam and buttered croissants. It tickled my nose pleasantly and made me smile drowsily. I yawned and stretched before becoming aware of a second even more pleasant sensation, a gentle tongue on my toe that made me first sigh in total relaxation and then grow aroused once I was cognizant that it was Ivo's. The rough wet organ moved down to the arch of my foot and I giggled and pulled away because it tickled terribly. His hand closed around my ankle and pulled it back so that he could continue his oral exploration. I was entirely at his mercy.

I felt his light quick breath on my calf and moaned pleasurably when his teeth nibbled the soft pad of flesh just under my knee. His smooth lips suckled my thigh and his strong hands reached underneath to lift me and spread my legs wider. I was already panting in anticipation, my cock squeaking as it sputtered in excitement. I felt his nose move between my cheeks, blowing hard and hot and I arched up against him, eager to feel his tongue in that part of me that we alone shared.

He kissed it softly, the faintest hint of a lick, before moving to begin his way down my other leg in parallel motion to that of the first. I was dismayed. I desperately wanted him and didn't want to wait. I tried to move so as to pull him back up where I needed him but his hand reached out to restrain me, forcing me to acquiesce to his whims. Thus was I tortured for another three minutes as he leisurely sampled every part of that limb.

I was breathless when I realized he was done and lifted himself up to lie on top of me. I bit my lower lip and gave a little growl to let him know I was angry with him for making me wait, wrapping my legs – now jelly – around him as I simultaneously urged him on. He slipped into me as easily, as gracefully, as the seal slides beneath the water's surface, already lubricated by his own desire. I gasped in unmitigated pleasure to feel him in me at last, meeting his mouth with my own and we began to move.

When we had finished and I lay beneath him relishing the feel of his hard body, he turned his head to kiss me softly on the cheek. "Breakfast?" he whispered, nuzzling my ear.


	56. Chapter 56

**AN: **MERCI énormément pour toutes vos reviews et vos alertes ! (and to the English readers, it would be good to hear from you as well. :D)**  
**

___Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l'oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé._

___~ Le Petit Prince, _Antoine de Saint Exupéry___  
_

_**Wilding a Tame Heart**_

"Do not under any circumstances let the cat in!"

How tame we have become in our old(er) age, how very domesticated - a house, two cars and a cat to our names. He sits with his book by the fireplace, legs crossed, brow furrowed, looking very professorial with his glasses, greying hair and weathered skin. I am editing my review of Stephen Schwartz's opera "Séance on a Wet Afternoon". I consider asking him for an opinion but am loath to disturb the tranquil scene.

Ours is a placid existence, a bottomless river without ripples.

"She's killing a bird and I do not want it squawking and bleeding all over the carpet."

_Or not. _

I smile to myself thinking this was how it was always meant to be, our happily ever after. Still waters run deep but time heals everything. I struggle to remember clearly those turbulent years when we were but two wild things fighting to get out.

I stand quietly so as not to disturb him - he is so very close to falling asleep, his mid-morning nap – and move silently across the room to the sliding doors. She looks at me, savage and proud, a huntress returning triumphant to her tribe. I open the door and frown at her.

"Put the bird down!" I order, prying it gently from her jaws before letting her back into the warm house. I place the poor dead thing on the railing with the intention of burying it later this afternoon. Ivo wouldn't want it in the rubbish. It doesn't belong there. "It was only a baby bird," I scold her as she walks away. "Not a real kill."

She pauses to turn and glower at me - two cool pale blue moons that remind me of someone else - before striding off to plant herself on Ivo's lap for _her_ mid-morning nap.

I look at them curled up comfortably together – two peas in a pod – and smile to myself.


	57. Chapter 57

_**The Dangling Conversation**_

I met her in a restaurant in Juneau. She was alone at her table reading and for some reason it felt right to me. It was something Ivo would do.

I was never lonely when I was with Ivo but he had only to depart for five minutes and the loneliness would well up in me. Each passing minute became unbearable until I could no longer endure it. It was that way the night I first saw Isabel, my first night away from Ivo in Alaska. I smiled at her across the room and she smiled back. I took that as an invitation and stood up to walk over to her. She politely put her book away.

"I see I am not the only one reading alone tonight," I said by way of greeting. "Tim Cornish".

She smiled hesitantly at me, something cautious in her eyes, but then she held out her own hand. "Isabel Winwood. I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Cornish."

"Call me Tim," I laughed and sat down. She was British as well which made us instant friends in that lonely place. I asked her where from and she replied that she hadn't lived there in many years.

"I was born in England" – she didn't specify the region – "but moved when I was still quite young. I live, have lived, in Vancouver for nearly twenty years so I suppose I should be inclined to say that is where I am from."

Her answer pleased me. She said it outright like that – low, distinct, accentless so that I couldn't have placed her anywhere other than "Vancouver".

"And what are you doing in Alaska?" I asked, genuinely fascinated by her already.

"Oh, family matters," and that same guarded look crept into her eyes. "I am running errands for my brother. He is much too busy to look after his personal affairs so he calls upon me to do it for him." And she laughed but it seemed forced, as if something were bothering her.

"What does he do?" But the waiter had appeared to frown at me for changing tables without consulting him. "Sorry," I said to him, a half-laugh in my throat. I wasn't at all sorry. I was thrilled to have met Isabel Winwood. Juneau no longer seemed like a death sentence.

We ordered our wine and food and she told me of herself by way of observation of others. I learned that she was married, still married, sadly no children; that she taught in a pre-school and loved it; that she didn't like telephones and most especially telephones at the table (this with a pointed glare at the one brought to the table closest to us so that the occupant could discuss, rather loudly, his personal affairs for all to hear). The spoken word was too harsh, too inflexible. She liked the written word – letters and notes and books and newspaper articles. Writing was always subject to interpretation. I confessed to her that I was an aspiring novelist and she perked up and asked what I wrote. My ego had taken a beating between Martin's ruthless criticisms and Ivo's out-of-hand dismissal of my story about the little boy on the beach but I felt strangely comfortable with Isabel, _safe_ in the belief that she would not castigate my lowly endeavors. She listened attentively, asking me about different aspects of the plot and the characters, wanting me to quote passages from it. My heart warmed and I found myself telling her other things about myself, things about my childhood and my love for music.

It was almost like talking to Ivo but then again it was nothing like that. Though she was scornful (and in a manner that reminded me so much of him) it was of _things_, never of people. She was as learned as he but her knowledge came from reading, not academic pursuits. Of two things we never spoke – science and sex, the first the foundation of Ivo's universe, the second that of my relationship with him. How odd that the two things that had come to dominate my life for more than a year-and-a-half never came up in my conversations with her, not once.

It was a most unusual interaction.


	58. Chapter 58

_**Chameleon**_

_Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?_

_~ Obsession, _Animotion

The more we were together, the more I began to imagine that Isabel thought me gay, that she had somehow seen me with Ivo and decided I was safe to be around, that she was – no, dear God – a "fag hag". Ivo had explained the type to me though he himself was closest to other gay males and was baffled by women who wanted to hang around queers.

Perhaps it was the look she gave me when I recited poetry or discussed literature. Perhaps it was because I was too interested in things like clothing and furnishings, as Emily had once said. Whatever the case, I suddenly wished I were more manly – that I didn't read Jane Austen and the Brontes and _Les Fleurs du Mal_. I wished I played a sport and liked classic rock rather than classical music. I wished I liked cars and football and other things that men were supposed to like. I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering if I "looked gay". I didn't want to be gay! I wanted to be whatever Isabel wanted me to be! I craved her approval, her undivided attention. I wanted her to look up to me, to respect and need me. I wanted her to desire me as I desired her, enough to abandon her husband and follow me away.

She was with me when I was first handed my letters from Ivo at the front desk. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively and I told a little white lie, about being responsible for my brother (one I did not have) as well. My hands shook as I shoved the damning evidence to the contrary into my pocket and took her arm to walk up the stairs to our respective rooms. I felt that Ivo's letters – _love letters_ – were blowing my cover, emasculating me before her very eyes. I was desperate that she never ever know that I had been with a man. And so I invented a second lie, about my ex-girlfriend still hounding me even with 4500 miles between us. She looked at me, half-smiling half-inquiring.

Ivo's letters kept arriving daily and I cringed in embarrassment and fear that she might learn the truth of who and what he and I were _had been_. From that point on one small lie led easily to another until I had fabricated an existence so convoluted in its detail, I had difficulty remembering what I had said, where I'd been, who I was. Worse, she seemed to be cooling toward me as if sensing the enormity of the subterfuge, as if growing distrustful of me.

Years later, when she came to me in Aldeburgh to take me back to him, she told me, "It is better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for someone you are not." And then she took me in her arms and kissed my hair and said, "But know I do love you – have always loved you - for who and what you are, and do not resent you for the things you have done."

I couldn't imagine why she said it. But I was very grateful she did.


	59. Chapter 59

_**Of fairy tales and modern man**_

_Ivan's favorite fairy tale theme was that of the shipwrecked sailor. It appealed to his nautical nature, his fantasies of being completely self-sufficient and his romantic love of sleeping under the beach under the stars._

"I'm not romantic," he interrupted me.

"You are and it is my story so stay out of it, I shall depict my character as I please," I told him firmly.

"Yes but the character's name is 'Ivan' and he quite clearly is me so I shall ask you to be fair in your representation."

We were sitting back to back on the couch which allowed him a view of my work. I sighed and crossed out "romantic".

_A learned man he longed to escape his proscribed urban lifestyle and return to a primitive instinctual existence. _

"Isn't much of existence 'instinctual'?" he queried.

I sighed louder, marked out the entire paragraph in bold harsh scribbles and started again.

"You'll never get anything done if you continue like that," he warned me.

"Ivo, are you writing this or am I?" I complained.

"I was simply offering input," he sniffed, offended.

"And I thank you for your help but 'tis not a group assignment!"

I chewed on my pencil and he pretended to read. I could feel the rigidity of his spine and knew he was watching me from the back of his head.

"Alright," I sighed, "If you were to write a tale of a shipwrecked sailor, what would it be?"

He was instantly animated, placing his own book down and commencing as if he were at the lecture podium. "So many of the great novels have come from this very theme – _Robinson Crusoe_, _Lord of the Flies_,_ Candide_, _The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time._"

"You are completely making that last one up!" I exclaimed, thoroughly amused by his antic nature.

"I am not! It is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez first published in the Spanish quarterly _El Espectador _in 1955."

"Alright, don't tell me any more about that one. I need an original tale."

"I would look at the psychology of the characters – what happens when man is stripped of all he has known and must now rely on his ingenuity to stay alive against great odds. What do we become when we are placed in such a setting? Which aspect of our nature will win out – the determination to survive or that of maintaining one's humanity? To what lengths will we go – slashing the throats of gentle turtles to drink their blood? Murdering our fellow castaway to eat his flesh? The tales of such true episodes abound and suggest that there is no clear cut behaviour, that responses vary even in the same environment, even in the same person.

"Thus I would subject my characters to extremes and explore the duality that resides in each of us. I'd be curious to see which nature wins, the savage or the civilized."

I frowned at him. It was good. "I quite like that concept, Professor Steadman," I said, "May I have it for my paper?"

"Of course," he said modestly, pleased to have dominated me once again. "Don't forget to include me in your 'thank-yous'," he added quickly.

"I won't."


	60. Chapter 60

_**The Flag of Pride**_

Ivo and Martin were both gay but separated by more than two generations they were as different as night and day. Martin was classic Wilde, a dandy in his three-piece suit steeped in the principles of cultured pleasure and arcane conversation.

Ivo by contrast had been reared in that era that rejected staid society and unleashed the primal lusts of man. Confident of his physical prowess, he was far more interested in his sexual conquests than participating in anything that included the upper strata of society. He spent his youth prowling underground toilets and night clubs.

Martin felt that homosexuality made him more sensitive to artistic impulses though he himself had failed to produce a single novel for all the fanfare. Ivo thought being queer was natural – birds and mammals also had homosexuals in their populations; he just happened to get the DNA that made him that way. Actually, Ivo argued, animals were superior in that gay penguins were not chased out of the flock simply for their preferences that had absolutely no bearing on anything of importance to the survival of the penguin community.

Martin felt poofters were different to others of their sex, that they shared more in common with women, who also appreciated the gentler things in life. Ivo's comeback was bollocks, if wanted gentle, he wouldn't be chasing after other men; he liked men precisely because they _weren't _women.

But for all their differences they shared the common bond of all gay men, a sense of community and responsibility for one another as a minority in a larger society. However young a concept, "gay pride" spanned generations and made them brothers in their orientation and their fight for acceptance.

Similarly, I found that the others welcomed me with open arms despite my history of ambivalence. I was one of them now. The past didn't matter.


	61. Chapter 61

_**Love and Rockets**_

Ivo loved teaching. Rather, he loved students _people _who wanted to learn. He always paused for questions during his lectures which invariably meant he didn't cover all the material he had planned for the day. But he didn't care. He made himself available to those hungry few at the end of the hour, walking to the edge of the stage to seat himself and continue the discussion. When the next class arrived to boot them out of the hall, he strolled back to his office, a few stragglers still in tow for coffee and more conversation.

He was patient, fatherly even, but never egotistical. His was an intrinsic love of learning. He was always curious, eyes constantly roving looking for something new, noting the ordinary in life as much as the arcane. He was possessed by an inexorable drive to comprehend, to find questions for the answers he found. He read widely and voraciously and explored another's city house with as much care as he did an excavation in the mountain wilderness.

Only in one sphere was he content with the same thing day after day after day. Ivo never wanted new lovers. He wanted a permanent mate. A marriage of sorts.

"You'll get bored with me!" I warned, all too prone to wanting novelty in relationships.

"Only if you allow yourself to stagnate," he replied mildly, sketching the outline of dinosaur. "And I can't see that happening, can you?"


	62. Chapter 62

_**Every You, Every Me**_

"Let me go, Ivo. Let me just walk away and never see me again. Let me have a clean break."

He stared down at the moonlit sea, his face almost completely hidden in the night shadows. "Ah," he said, sighing heavily. "I don't know." He brought his cigarette to his mouth, the intensity of the orange glow brighter still when he inhaled. I shivered, thinking he could burn me.

"Please, Ivo!" I begged. He sounded as if he were trying to be reasonable. I meant to play to that reason before the situation got out of hand.

"Could I be wonderful? Could I let you go? Say, 'Bless you, my child, go and be happy with your new sweetheart'?" He paused, considering the possibility and then delivered the final blow. "No. I could not do that."

"Why not?" I cried, desperation taking hold. "How can you still want me knowing I don't want you anymore?"

"How?" He sounded surprised. "I'll tell you how. Because I don't believe you know what you want. You've had a jolly time with this woman whom you've known all of ten days and think somehow she will make you happy. But you do not know her and God knows she doesn't know you. How could anyone know you when you don't even know yourself? You will be with her a month, maybe two, and then you'll be chasing after someone else or crawling back to me. No, I will not let you make that mistake. It would be far too damaging to you and to me."

"And I suppose you know me?" I shouted, not caring if anyone heard.

"Yes," he laughed softly, taking another deep drag from his cigarette. "Yes, I believe I know you very well."


	63. Chapter 63

_**Touched**_

Mad people were once said to be touched by God; their sixth sense was a blessing that brought them closer to the mysteries of the world. Only in recent times have people been locked away or medicated for their "illness". Somehow as society modernized passion became dangerous, something to fear, something threatening to the complacent and the status quo.

Ivo says the energy at the core of the universe manifests itself in different ways, sometimes in the passionate nature of animals, sometimes in the ecstasy of man. He says only when that energy becomes dangerous for the tribe is it put down – the young stallion chased from the herd for threatening to divide and thereby weaken it.

For all his words of wisdom, he was very closed-minded. I couldn't confess to him what I saw. The energy at the core of the universe was a scientific fact; spirits from the afterlife a human construct. Those things were a throwback to the unenlightened era when man followed the pseudosciences of astrology and divination.

I wondered what he would say if I showed him Danny's note.

The one he wrote this morning.


	64. Chapter 64

_**Riddle of the Sands**_

It was a morning like any other, the pale brown sea churning gently in the distance. My head hurt from too much alcohol and not enough sleep. Another rough night of riddles that left me baffled and unsettled. Glimpses of things I instinctively knew in strange settings. I'd given up trying to comprehend; I simply let him lead me where he wanted me to go, show me what he wished me to see. I wasn't altogether convinced there was any sense behind my nocturnal visions. Perhaps the simple answer was that I was slowly going mad like my mother before me.

I made my coffee and seated myself in my father's chair by the window to watch the boats go out. The steady life of the fishermen appealed to me – the constancy of routine altered only by the vagaries of the weather. I wondered how my life might have been if I had grown up the son of one of them instead of my father. I wouldn't have read, wouldn't have done anything so foolish as to get a BA in English ("And what can one do with that?" Clarissa's words came back to haunt me).

At the age of 23, I felt like a sexless old man with nothing and no one to call my own. What history I had was best forgotten.I had accomplished nothing for all the upheaval so why dwell on it? I sighed and reached for my book, trying to ignore the fact that my youthful idle existence owed itself entirely to Ivo's work ethic. I pulled the piece of paper marking my place out to relocate it to the back of the book. I didn't know it at the time but I was holding Danny's first communication to me in my soft tired hands. I thoughtlessly shoved the note between two other pages.

I imagine now that he was watching me at that moment - as he always did - from some corner of the room. Was he sad that I was so careless with his feelings? Angered by my lassitude when he had been robbed of his own passionate existence? Did he want to trade places with me – come back and send me away?

Oblivious, I read, my life as non-descript as the color of the ocean water just beyond my window.


	65. Chapter 65

_**Notes from Underground**_

The first note was in the box of books I was unpacking. I don't know how Ivo missed it when he packed my things. That long thin slanting scrawl so unlike any other.

I'd know Danny's hand anywhere.

At first I thought it was one of his letters, that maybe Ivo had found it amongst the things I'd taken, meant to place it elsewhere and then gotten distracted.

But, no, Ivo doesn't get distracted. A herd of stampeding wildebeest couldn't deter him from a task. He had carefully selected which books to take, knowing my tastes better than I. He wanted me to have comfort reading - books I read and reread when it was dark and stormy outside and I liked to sit in my father's chair, snuggled up in a cover my grandmother had knit so very long ago.

And why would Danny's letters be in Aldeburgh? I'd left them in Ivo's flat. He had returned them to Isabel, not wanting to keep them but unwilling to destroy them either.

Next I decided I had brought the note with me, tucked into my bag when I moved. But Ivo had packed me for the move. What was the likelihood that he had overlooked it then?

It was the contents of the note that rattled me. It was nothing of Danny's I had ever read and I was pretty certain I had seen all surviving traces of him. It wasn't a letter at all. It was a curious short writing, almost like a book review of sorts. But not even a real review. Just four sentences on a piece of yellow legal pad paper. An arcane philosophical statement that rendered me greatly disturbed.

_Dostoevsky's Underground Man was conscious of his problems and understood that his acts were not just. Yet he did nothing to change his life, preferring inaction and avoidance rather than resolution. _

_Many reject the notion that things happen for a purpose because man does many things without having any purpose and this is what dictates the course of human history. Do you think your actions stem from a need for revenge, some irrational desire to inflict suffering on others?  
_

Why did I have the uncanny feeling that Danny was addressing me?


	66. Chapter 66

_**A Clockwork Heart**_

The notes continued to appear, day after day after day. I actually preferred the nightmares - at least I could pretend they were drug-induced hallucinations or imagine that I was going mad. The stack of letters in the bottom drawer of my dresser - continual, tangible, irrefutable - reminded me that I was being judged every second of the day, even those times when I slept.

Danny's next message appeared in the post, tucked between Ivo's letter and a bill for the phone. I hid it from Isabel and read it alone in Ivo's room.

_Camus' Meursault exhibited no grief at his mother's death, choosing instead to pass the time in sexual encounters and then a second-hand murder. Even when incarcerated, he found prison quite tolerable once he got used to the idea that he couldn't have sex or go where he wanted. He passed his days sleeping or recalling objects he once owned._

_When sentenced to death for his crimes, Meursault expressed alarm and outrage. He maintained that no one had the right to judge him, that his personal anguish at the meaninglessness of existence exempted him from culpability. Meursault failed to comprehend that disregard for social conventions ultimately leads to isolation from or retaliation by one's peers._

I declared then and there that I would not read another note even if landed in my lap. But of course I did. And it did.

Danny's third communique came to me in the night, so that it lying beside me when I awoke.

_The famous character George Wickham characterizes a common-place man in society. Such men are beyond selfish – displaying not only shallow emotions and superficial charm but the incapacity for love (manifest in their promiscuity), pathological lying and unreliability. Mr. Wickham's ending is a happy one – a loving and forgiving family readily supports his parasitic lifestyle and the opportunity to redeem his name. Few are so lucky. _

I began to see what a soulless monster I was, a clockwork heart with a wind-up soul. I recognized the damage I had done to others – to Ivo and Isabel and Emily. And I understood that while I was only repeating the cycle of my own upbringing, I had no right. Like Wickham, I had been handed the opportunity to change and had rejected it.


	67. Chapter 67

**AN: Danny Reyes belongs in **_**Judas Kiss**_**. I just wanted him here for a little fun. :)**

_**Courtship**_

Danny and Ivo went about it all backwards. Or maybe it was normal. I don't know what's normal for gay male courtship. They had had a passionate weekend of motel sex when they first met and then returned to Wolfville whereupon Ivo discovered that he had changed.

_Radically__._

In a short period of time he had grown self-conscious. He was suddenly genuinely worried about being older (31 was 100 in gay years), that he wasn't as fit as he had been in his twenties, that his beard might make him appear too… rustic? ("_Lumberjack_." *sigh*)

He really needed to do something with his hair. Of late it was shabby which while very appropriate for the academic milieu might be off-putting for Danny. Perhaps Danny liked his men better coiffed. He would spend some time getting to know him so that he knew what he wanted in a man.

His clothing was definitely _definitely_ not suitable for the younger generation. To fit in with his colleagues and differentiate himself from his students, he wore trousers and ties but Danny seemed like a leather jacket kind of boy. He would need to invest in one of those if he wanted to retain his interest.

The question of entertainment was more worrisome still. Ivo enjoyed a quiet night at home with dinner and a book. He didn't own a television by choice, preferring the cinema and concerts (classical). What if Danny liked clubbing? Would he be expected to stay up all hours of the night on the dance floor? (_"No please no please no please no please. No night clubs!"_) Ivo the Terrible was terribly intimidated.

It was a grueling morning of preparations, trying to decide which aspect of his physical person to tackle first. When the doorbell rang he almost ignored it but decided it might be the delivery of his new computer and put the comb down to answer. His mouth literally fell open when he saw who it was.

"Hi," said Danny shyly. He looked completely different. He was wearing glasses and a nice pair of trousers. He'd even washed his hair for the occasion.

Ivo burst out laughing.


	68. Chapter 68

_**Where the Wild Things Are**_

Why did Ivo love me so? What was there about me that interested him?

"I'm very much in love with you," he said quietly in the corner of the bar. "I can't bear to be separated from you."

He said it casually as if he were merely making an observation, as if he were as surprised by the fact as I was.

I said, "I love you, too." I said it twice, to convince him, to convince myself. Because as soon as he said it I wished he hadn't. As soon as he said it, he was somehow a lesser person in my eyes. If he loved me, he couldn't be worth having.

Later I determined that he wanted me because he could never have me - I was a wild thing that would come and go on my own terms. But I was wrong again, for wild hearts can be tamed. No there was something else. Something absolutely incomprehensible to me.

"I love you," he told me later, "because we belong to one another. It's as simple as that."

It made no sense to me then. I'm not entirely certain it makes sense to me now. But, then, love is a nonsensical thing.


	69. Chapter 69

**AN: Danny Reyes? He belongs to _Judas Kiss_. **_**  
**_

**And Ivo. :P  
**

_**Sex and Violins  
**_

Sex had always been something in the dark – in the public toilets, in the alley, in the safety of night. It had never been _could never be_ love. The few who attempted relationships wound up castrated, imprisoned, publicly scorned, _unemployed_. The list went on and on.

It felt strange, _wrong_ waking up with Danny, cuddling him early in the morning. Touch shouldn't tickle. It was a base need, a primitive instinct, something every beast did and then walked away. Still –

He nuzzled the soft white shoulder against him. Licked the warm skin that tasted of sweat – his and Danny's mingled together. He slid his tongue across and up the boy's neck, savoring the sensation of both their shivering. He inserted it into Danny's ear and marveled at the gasp it elicited. He smelled his hair and left butterfly kisses on his eyelids, stroked his arm and played footsies with cold feet.

It felt _amazing_. He was like a little boy again – sweet and vulnerable.

He drew back quite suddenly, a completely foreign notion forming in his very rational brain.

Danny looked quizzically up from underneath him.

"I think I'm falling in love with you!" Ivo said in all astonishment.

Danny laughed happily, reaching up to draw him back down.


	70. Chapter 70

**AN: **Danny Reyes is the property of_ Judas Kiss. _And he is in fact abused as a child in that canon._**  
**_

_**When Danny loved Ivo**_

Broken bones heal, if properly cared for usually with no visible bulges at the fracture site. But a break ignored becomes a permanent bone callus, a mark carried for life just like a tattoo.

Ivo could feel the bumps under his gentle fingers, the telltale signs of damage incurred over the years: the odd bend of a finger; the slight dislocation of one arm; the unnatural indentation in the clavicle. He had devoted his life to the study of skeletal structures, knew the indications of injury and frequently the cause.

Danny's wounds weren't merely psychological.

Ivo never asked him what happened. Danny wouldn't have told him anyway. The boy's unwillingness to return home for the summer in and of itself spoke volumes. And so Ivo did the only logical thing a man in his situation – madly in love with his undergraduate student whom he had been seeing romantically for exactly one week – could do.

He took Danny to New Mexico with him. "As my cameraman."

Which of course every paleontologist requires….

Danny said nothing. But that day his heart began to grow again, began to love again.


	71. Chapter 71

_**Blindness**_

Danny once tried to run away so much did he hate his father. He was only ten at the time and he got as far as the creek in the woods before turning back. It was too dark and he was frightened, tired and hungry. He'd been crying hard when he fled the house and fallen down several times on the dirt road, tearing his pants and skinning his knees. He screamed then, furious at the pain, anguished that not one of his neighbors came out to see to him.

If his mother had been alive, she would have taken him home and cleaned him up.

Walking back snuffling on the mucous clogging his ears and nose, he told himself when he grew up he'd get back at him, he'd kill him if that was what it took. But when he entered the filthy house and saw his father lying passed out on the couch he methodically began to pick up as he knew he should, scraping the plates and neatly stacking them in the sink to be cleaned the next day after school. Then he went up to bed, gently easing his sore body onto the soiled sagging mattress.

Years later he cast a critical eye on that experience and wondered angrily at the indifference of a small society to the cries of a helpless child.

I wonder what he must have felt that night he was killed as his screams in the silent darkness fell on deaf ears, how completely disillusioning it must have been to realize that nothing in the world had changed.


	72. Chapter 72

**AN: **Thanks to **feckle** for one crucial idea behind this.

Réponse à Anon : Merci pour ta review, je suis contente que ma fic te plaise et j'espère que la suite te plaira toujours autant!

**Danny Reyes belongs to _Judas Kiss_ and Carlos Pedraza.  
**

_**Excavation and Extrapolation**_

Peer pressure only works on those with the possibility of acceptance into the fold. For the outsider, it's meaningless. If the system shuts you out, you reject it wholesale.

Danny was born different – poor, unwanted, manifestly abused. He might have sought out his own kind but even they shied away from his extreme circumstances. No one willingly enters a volatile situation. He was ignored at school and on the streets and formed tenuous _temporary_ alliances with those equally undesirable based on need rather than any genuine sense of solidarity.

Other parents pitied him and held their own children closer to keep the danger at bay. His teachers simply wished he would disappear; he was a reminder of everything that could _and did_ go wrong. His peers just didn't understand. He was too angry, too dangerous and much too smart.

What did Ivo see in him, that first fated day? An irresistibly pretty face? There was no sweetness to Danny. A passionate being, then, a live wire like himself? Ivo's as human as the rest of us. But it was much more than that. He could have had that anywhere. No, it had to have been the fact that Danny was an enigma, a locked box. Something to study and learn from. A scientific exploration, reconstruction.

_Dig, find, clean, identify, catalogue, display. _

And then celebrate.

Discreetly, of course.


	73. Chapter 73

_**A Mid-Winter's Tale**_

Ivo left the hospital on Christmas Eve. I imagine the medical staff felt they were doing him a great favor – allowing him out to be with his family for the holidays.

Danny had been buried almost two weeks before in his home town, the place where he had neither family nor friends. Ivo was still in a coma then. Isabel attended in his stead. She'd arranged it all – the headstone with the little angel to watch over him, the service, the announcements in the papers. Isabel's exactly like her brother; she is incredibly level-headed and thorough in a crisis.

Danny wasn't popular. Few people came to the funeral; his own father had died the year before and most of the students who knew him were already gone for the holidays. Even Ivo's colleagues (who should have come out of respect for him) stayed away. Everyone knew what had happened. Everyone knew the most poorly-kept secret in town, that Ivo and Danny were lovers. It was tragic but something they steered clear of. Isabel didn't tell Ivo that.

Martin came. He even stayed with Ivo in the hospital for a few days before returning to England.

Ivo didn't want to go back to Wolfville. He didn't ever want to see the house again – that place where Danny had been brutally wrenched from his life. He intended to resign his position at the university though he had no idea where he would go or what he might do. He didn't care where he went. He didn't care what he did. He didn't want to do anything. He didn't want to live anymore.

How could he live without Danny? What was the point?

He was still too weak to travel to Vancouver so they spent the holiday in a small dark hotel room in Halifax. Ivo didn't speak at all. He just sat and stared at the grey sea day after day. All around him the city was boisterously making merry – windows and trees decorated with pretty tinsel and popcorn and colored lights to set the stage for the festivities; sumptuous dishes prepared in every kitchen for the arrival of extended family and friends; the faithful flocking to churches to lend their voices to the joyous celebration that spilled out onto the streets and carried the revelry to others on that happiest of days.

How surreal it all must have been – watching the world rejoice while he mourned. How embittering to watch life go on when your own has suddenly ground to a halt. How utterly disconnected _dislocated_ he must have felt. I understood Ivo better the day Isabel told me this mid-winter's tale, understood his scorn for frivolity and what he considered the facile nature of man. Like Danny, he had become an outsider, separated from the rest of mankind by circumstances beyond his control.


	74. Chapter 74

**AN:** As always, Danny Reyes is the property of Carlos Pedraza and _Judas Kiss_ but oh how I wish he were mine!

_**Getting Away With It**_

I hate that mirror, it makes me feel so worthless  
I'm an original sinner but when I'm with you I couldn't care less  
I've been getting away with it all my life

~ _Getting Away With It_, Electronic

The consolidation of the rural schools in Nova Scotia was a financial measure: the tiny populations of the shoreline villages weren't worth the tremendous costs of educating them. Most of them wound up on welfare anyway. But the move was pitched as a means of "bringing up" the poor; exposure to better education _(families) _would equalize the society, providing opportunity and role models to the economically disadvantaged. A noble concept it seemed but in practice it further stigmatized the children from rural routes, creating sharp division in the classroom that regularly erupted in hostilities.

Danny was one of those bussed from a port on the Bay to the comfortably middle class community of Bridgetown. As a result he did indeed change, but not quite in the way intended. Close encounters with the easy life made him bitterly resentful; theirs was the life he should have had, the love and support he should have known. He became harder, stronger, more determined. The well-meaning _patronizing _types who treated him as if he should be pitied enraged him, making him angrier still until he was ruthless. By the age of eight he was stealing from the more privileged children, usually candy and chips and other foods from their lunchboxes that he couldn't get at home. Next he stole their lunch money for his own purchases; then their toys and trading cards. He watched them from across the room when they discovered the foul play, fascinated by their expressions. He began to study human reaction to unpleasantness.

He became increasingly daring as the years went on, stealing a guitar and an amp for the band he wanted to start when he was thirteen. By then a skilled thief, he moved out of the school and into the neighborhoods, hitting the houses nearby and then working his way into the wealthiest part of town. He moved like a cat, scaling walls and slipping undetected through back doors and windows. He delighted in his prowess and scorned his victims for thinking themselves superior to him.

He stole virtually anything he could get his hands on, sometimes pretty objects like paintings to keep for himself. He had a large collection of such items in his room. Sometimes he stole things he could pawn or trade. Mostly he stole because it amused him to get away with it.

When he was fifteen he nicked a camcorder off an unsuspecting tourist in a food market.

He shot his first film with it.


	75. Chapter 75

_For Lanna Michaels, with love and squalor_

_**Bend with Me **_

Danny was attracted to Ivo. Not in the way he was always attracted to stronger older men. The way magnets are attracted to one another – the like ends pushing each other away while the opposites jump and attach. He liked Ivo's passion for his field, his disdain for the average person's tepid sampling of life. He liked his honesty and his genuine interest in things he didn't know, hadn't encountered before. He was afraid of him, afraid he would be rejected by someone he admired so much. He stayed away for the longest time, reluctant to break the fantasy that made each day exciting and livable.

Ivo had spotted him early on. Ivo noticed everything –a scar on the lip of a customer at the counter in the diner; a drift in the attention of the third student from the left, eighteenth row; the newest graffiti on the toilet wall. It was rather hard not to notice the most striking boy in his freshman lecture. He tried very hard not to look. It was wrong, he told himself,_ illegal_ to ogle one's students. Many a learned man before him had fallen from great heights for such thoughts. He tracked Danny Reyes' progress in his class and wished the boy would do better. He was convinced it was laziness and felt like slapping his ears back to make him shape up. The boy was too bright to be failing an intro geology course. (He wasn't entirely sure how he knew the boy was bright, he was just sure of it. And when Ivo was sure of something, there was no arguing with him. "There is no room for opinion here," he would always say. "It is an irrefutable truth.")

Danny did finally show up in his office - arrogant, the like end of the magnet. He wanted to be certain to reject Ivo before he could be rejected. Save himself.

Ivo recognized the tactic at once. Human beings are so limited in their emotional responses. It occurred to him the best approach would be to break the magnetic attraction, make it something else.

"Bend with me," he suggested to Danny.


	76. Chapter 76

_**Censorship: self and societal (or are they one and the same?)**_

All men are repressed. The British simply have it down to a fine science. If we have strong opinions, we couch them in polite speech so as not to offend. Strong feelings are smothered as they threaten the stability of society; we replace these with work and healthy organized activities like sports and religion or less acceptable ones like drink and drugs. Strong sexual drives – the taboo of existence - are carefully controlled, finding that necessary outlet only in those dark private places where we will not be recognized by our ordinary acquaintances.

Was it any wonder the 60s happened? It wasn't so much Beatlemania as human mania finding its voice for the first time in modern society, the unleashing of perfectly normal emotions that rattle the institutions of power to their very foundations. I was much too young to see it that way. It was simply a given – silly school girls screaming like idiots over rock stars. It made every young British male want to be a rock star, to have girls screaming over him.

But I never wanted anyone screaming over me. I hated any form of upheaval, hid from it really. I was the kind to sleep with the enemy not throw myself against the bars that contained me, railing at the many injustices of life. I wanted to placate people. To keep them sweet and off my back.

So why was I so attracted to Ivo? Why didn't I shy away from him in the very beginning? He was the first person to force me to look at myself and question why I did as I did. He was the first to make me truly uncomfortable with who I was.

"Why for fuck´s sake are you censoring yourself?" he asked me once. I had no reply for him at that time.

Now I say to him – "Because that is how I was trained to behave. Because like all men I fear chaos and anarchy, the unwritten law of the jungle that might result in my demise. Because life is meant to be quiet and passive, not wild and savage."

So which of us is right? The outsider who cares not one iota for the perpetuation of a society that excludes him? Or those of us who cling to such an oppressive existence?


	77. Chapter 77

_**On relationships, compromise and horror movies**_

However great his antipathy toward others had been, it was universally acknowledged that Danny changed dramatically with Ivo. The rough jagged edge was replaced with humor and genuine affection. He adored Isabel (and, in time, she him) and his absolute devotion to Ivo was unshakable. He went everywhere with him commencing the first month of their relationship when Ivo took him on a dig to New Mexico. He would even have gone to Alaska with him.

If he'd lived.

Ivo in turn found himself more than willing to take up Danny's interests. While he was a bit "old" to frequent clubs, had no interest in drugs and didn't feel terribly comfortable around Danny's student acquaintances, he very much enjoyed going to the cinema. He didn't own a television and his work/travel schedule didn't allow him to see most movies so Danny was a welcome excuse for some _other_ form of entertainment in his very structured academic existence.

Danny had been unable to afford much of anything prior to moving in with Ivo and the reality of having access to his favorite pastime made him want to splurge wildly and see every film that came out.

"Every?" Ivo asked doubtfully.

"_Every._" Emphatically.

"But horror movies suck."

Danny smiled indulgently at him.


	78. Chapter 78

**AN:** On Dreamwidth there is a game called _Milliways_Bar_. Characters from all fandoms show up in the bar at the end of the universe. I've toyed with the idea of submitting my app to play Ivo. This was written for that purpose though I subsequently decided I didn't have the time.

I took the idea of anomalies from _Primeval_, one of my absolute favorite shows. I put Ivo through the anomaly twice and then into Milliways.

In Milliways, one can go backward and forward and even the dead can come play. Here, I brought Danny back to help Ivo heal.

Réponse à Anon : Merci beaucoup pour ta review! Je suis navrée mais j'ai tellement de problèmes à trouver « Tim ». Je travaille sur le caractère d'Ivo maintenant et à vrai dire je ne sais pas quand je pourrais publier la suite. :(

So, literally into the universe - _outer space_ - we go!

Happy reading,

Pace is the trick

* * *

_Across the sea lies the fountain of renewal  
Where you will see  
The whole cause of your loneliness  
Can be measured in dreams  
That transcend all these lies  
And I wish and I pray  
That there may come a day for a savior's arms  
For a savior's arms_

~ _Enigma of the Absolute_, Dead Can Dance

_**In Milliways**_

In the bar at the end of the universe, Ivo finds –

Danny.

It's only his third time in the anomaly and he is isn't altogether convinced he believes it's happening. Not prone to dreams or nightmares, he's captured by the notion that this might be what is known as "lucid dreaming". He is very conscious of what is happening to him and equally certain it can't be real. Yet there are aspects of this that throw him. A man of science, he knows time travel is not possible but still there are things that demand explanation. Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that the dinosaurs looked nothing like those of Jurassic Park in his first two forays into the land before the time. Feathers! Who would have thought? But it makes sense, it explains so many things that have left them baffled for decades. Birds are _survivors_ of that primeval age. He has his work cut out for him on that front.

Now in Milliways, he sees a very real, very alive Danny before him. Even if this is only a dream, he'll take it.

Danny is sketching as he so often does in the late afternoon at home. Facing him, Ivo cannot see what it is. He can't see his eyes through those treacherous dark locks that hang like heavy drapes across his furrowed brow but he can follow his line of vision to the exact spot on the paper and he senses his pleasure, pleasure that he is back now. He knows Danny knows he's there though he doesn't acknowledge him, knows that the amused smile that curves his full pale lips is for him. They sense one another the way animals with finely honed instincts feel and smell their mates.

"I'm interrupting?" Ivo smiles as well. He feels so comfortable with Danny, as if they had never been apart. He isn't sad at all. They might be at home, Danny drawing as he walks in from the university. Where is the pain that has been part and parcel of his existence for the past decade, the empty ache that wracks his chest with every memory? Where is the dry taste of desperation, the feeling of mournfulness, the sense of irretrievable loss? He couldn't even bring himself to look at a photograph of Danny in his world, and here he is – looking at Danny.

"Not at all," Danny murmurs in a perfect parody of Ivo's British accent. "Gimme two seconds and I'm done." He lifts a finger and licks it and then reaches to smudge something on the upper right hand corner of the page. He hazards a glance at Ivo and there is laughter in his eyes.

"One," says Ivo easily as if they have all of eternity stretching out before them. "Two."

"It wasn't a literal two," mocks Danny. His smile broadens.

"Alas, I am a very literal sort of man," Ivo deadpans, leaning now against the wall to give Danny his more than two seconds.

"Too well do I know it," says Danny scathingly, but there's laughter in his voice as well. "There!" Immensely satisfied, he holds the drawing arms-length away from him to assess his handiwork. "A perfect likeness." And he hands it to Ivo.

It isn't at all. Ivo bursts out laughing. It is a caricature of him dressed in his familiar brown suit, blue and white striped shirt, blue tie. He's standing in front of chalkboard looking ferocious – to instill terror in the hearts of his students ("To encourage them to _apply themselves_!" the sputtered protest). Even the tiny stegosaurus on the black slate looks duly frightened as it tries to tuck its enormous spiky tail between its legs.

Ivo's hair is longer, darker, and he sports a reddish raggedy beard – his grooming a striking contrast to his attire. A professor trying to appease his fashionable sister. He's a younger happier Ivo, the Ivo from Danny's time.

"I remember those days," he says fondly, gazing at his portrait. But still he feels no sadness.

"I do, too." Danny is looking straight at him now, unabashedly in love. Danny is inscrutable for most people but not Ivo. Ivo can read him like a book. He knows that expression – like the contented family cat grooming itself after a sumptuous meal of warm salmon and cream sauce.

"I love it," says Ivo simply. "I shall put it in my office." He doesn't have an office here. Back – _there_?

"It's a good place for it," Danny says agreeably.

"Will you come back with me?" It's hurried and worried and suddenly he's much too serious.

"I can't." Danny presses his lips together thoughtfully and looks down at his lap, neither angry nor bitter. It's simply a fact of his existence. "But you can stay here with me." He looks back up and holds out his hand in invitation.

Ivo hesitates but takes it and allows himself to be drawn in. "If I do," he pauses, "what happens? Back there, I mean?"

"I don't know," Danny answers truthfully. "I can't go back from here. I only hear the stories."

"What do the others say?"

"That time doesn't change. That here we move forward but there you stand still."

"I like that," the thought makes him happy, actually. "I want to be here with you but - " and again he hesitates.

"But there you have Tim," Danny finishes for him.

"You were gone," he says by way of explanation and apology.

"I'm not blaming you." And he truly isn't.

"I don't know what to do." Ivo is completely at a loss. "I want to be here with you. I'm happy with you. And there aren't any problems here!"

Danny practically cackles. "Oh I assure you there are problems. Just not the kind you're used to."

"I don't want to lose you again," Ivo says forlornly.

"Then stay awhile." Danny smiles at him and places his arm around his shoulder. "We can talk."

And they do. They talk for _hours_.


	79. Another place, another time

_Peeling the skin back from my eyes I felt surprised_

_That the time on the clock was the time I usually retired_

_To the place where I cleared my head of you_

_But just for today I think I'll lie here and dream of you_

_~ Uncertain Smile, _The The_  
_

_**Another time, another place**_

The worst times are when he sleeps. No sooner does he succumb to the needs of his weak body when the cold rational confines of his mind are brutally stripped away and heavy waves drag him down to the memory bank.

He remembers those halcyon days when their lives fit together seamlessly – hand in glove, a second skin really. Remembers their routines, the phone call in the middle of the day to check the status of plans made that morning. Remembers the comfort of his presence – self and clothing and books and papers and such – strewn with an artful carelessness about the house. Remembers viscerally the peace that comes with the cessation of loneliness, the feeling of completion when one belongs to another.

Once they had designed a butterfly garden with the intention of capturing the flight of the monarchs as they emerged from their cocoons and Danny won an award for the film. Once they painted the rooms of their house outrageous colors which Ivo pronounced "vile" and Danny "vibrant". Once they made a set in the barn for a short Danny wrote, gathering nets and buoys from the shore, but the fishy stench brought the feral cats in droves and gave Mrs. Tidbits fleas and Ivo said it had to be dismantled before the neighbors called the Mounties which Danny said was a shame because it was the best idea he'd ever had but he agreed to stage the shoot on the beach.

Danny made Ivo a collage of tiny pebbles and shells and green and blue seaglass he found on the beach and Ivo framed it and hung it in his office where he could look at it all day. Ivo bought Danny a sloop thinking it would be romantic to sail off into the sunset every night sipping wine and Danny loved it though the waters of the Bay were hard to navigate and Ivo taxed himself every time getting them back to the breakwater safely. Danny christened his collage "Serenity" and Ivo christened the boat "Severity" and they both felt the combination summed them up quite nicely.

Danny liked posh hotels and lavish meals and Ivo liked roughing it in the wilderness. They compromised and spent the trips to and from excavation sites indulging a bit beyond their means and consequently had to use tarps as makeshift barriers when the torrential rain proved too much for their less than state-of-art camping gear. But how they had laughed and laughed and agreed it was the best adventure so far because making love in a muddy flooded basin with thunder and lightning all around was unsurpassable and Danny said it was even better than the Mariott on the waterfront on the first of July and Ivo pressed his lips to Danny's hand with something akin to fierce joy.

Sun beams flitting across his eyelids wake him and he finds that he feels oddly rested, calm. He blinks to remind himself where he is, the dream was so very vivid. And as he makes the transition to a wakeful state he discovers something remarkable:

The memory of Danny no longer hurts.


	80. Chapter 80

It was too hard, I decided, trying to change. I spent the next week thinking instead of the ways I might die – violent ends such as racing up the ramp in Ivo's sports car, slamming into the barrier, careening over the edge and falling _falling_ down _down down_ until impact when I would be instantly incinerated, exploded into a billion burning bits. I imagined the loneliness of the five-second journey through the air, what I might feel as I faced my own demise. I had no fear of God. Either I had become like Danny's narcissistic artist or the fear of living simply dwarfed any concerns for the After.

I imagined a quiet death – sitting in the car in the closed garage asphyxiating myself on carbon monoxide, headphones on and listening to something morbidly depressing. Most of the operas I loved were morbidly depressing. Then I remembered someone saying you coughed violently, throwing up your innards even, and it shattered my ideal quiet departure.

I thought of taking copious amounts of sleeping pills like Marilyn Monroe. I had access to them but wasn't sure the kind I had would kill me. With my luck, I'd wind up in the hospital.

I imagined drowning myself like Ophelia. I wasn't sure why I thought of Ophelia. Did suicide make one weak, womanly? I probably should have thought of Romeo, he of the poison draught. Juliet stabbed herself… I wasn't sure what made me think of that. Anyway drowning seemed violent and I wanted something peaceful.

I wondered why God couldn't just strike me dead in my sleep. Maybe Ivo was right, maybe there was no God. I looked back on my life and wondered where God had been in that sordid piece of history.

I wished I could be crushed by huge stones falling down on me, a stone slab that would obliterate me before I could think - _Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_ speeded up.

I wished I could swallow cyanide and be dead as soon as I bit down on the capsule.

I wished I could have been like McAuliffe, blown to bits on the space shuttle.

The phone rang. I might not have answered it but secretly I was hoping it was Ivo. I hadn't spoken to him since he left. So I did, and it was.

We spent a very happy hour chatting. He was ecstatic to be back on the ocean, in the cold. Martin always said he was like a malamute, ice was in his blood. I felt there was much justification for this theory as he clearly grew more animated in glacial climates. He had very much loved Ushuaia as he loved all new places; it had a pleasant park in which he passed a languid afternoon but the Falklands left him gobsmacked. He had literally never seen anything so breathtaking. He spoke like a child - not of preserved remains and their importance in the history of the earth but of the antics of living creatures: the many different birds including a vast array of penguins kept him entertained much of the day (he was making videos with the camcorder to show me, something quite out of character for him); the fur seals were a spectacle and an albino pup mistook him for his mother and flopped after him barking for help until he did something that violated not only the law of the land but his own personal code of ethics - carried it back to its herd; last but not least, he passed many happy hours in the company of bleating sheep which brought to mind our trip to Scotland when we were stopped for a full hour (it was actually about ten minutes but with Ivo shouting at the farmer it had indeed felt like an hour) at the sheep crossing. I wasn't entirely sure why that memory made him happy. It made me cringe. So much for differing perspectives.

He missed me terribly, he said. So great was his longing to be with me again he wasn't enjoying himself the way he should but I sensed that he actually missed me less in that new environment. He was making friends – a very famous geologist, several graduate students, a lovely couple from New York who had already invited us to visit and a famous novelist who was picking his brain for ideas for her next book (I had to admit I was envious). I felt strange listening to him; I felt like a parent whose child was away at camp. The child feels the necessity to miss the parent but is so busy having a wonderful adventure it only remembers that appropriate sentiment when the designated time to call home is at hand. Ivo missed me because he was supposed to miss me, because that is what lovers who are apart do.

It should have made me feel better, knowing that he was not agonizing over me. It lifted from my shoulders the huge responsibility of making him happy. But it didn't. It actually made me ache for him more. I hated myself for even thinking it, for seriously considering something so puerile. But I couldn't help myself. I seemed to fall naturally into that role with him. And I needed him, far more now than ever before.

"I want you to come home!" I burst into tears.


	81. Of lovers, past and present

**Danny Reyes is the property of Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss.**

**Milliways is the property of its creators - now residing on Dreamwidth - and its writers. I ask their forgiveness in playing outside of their terrain.**

**The information on film editing - about which I know absolutely nothing - comes from Wiki, of course. :D  
**

_**Of lovers, past and present**_

Ivo is lying on his back on the bar in Milliways, a large white screen hanging just behind him. He's chewing on a toothpick and putting off the irascible bartender who feels it is inappropriate to lie on the counter. Or watch homemade movies for that matter.

Danny is cutting and splicing film, decidedly old school but he insists it yields a superior result. Digital editing is all good and well but no one has really learned how to use the new technology. Knowing Ivo prefers long and detailed explanations (even if he hasn't the foggiest idea of what they're talking about), Danny offers him Dmytryk's Seven Rules of Cutting:

"Rule 1: _Never_ make a cut without a positive reason.

"Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut _long_ rather than short.

"Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'.

"Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'.

"Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action.

"Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'.

"Rule 7: Substance first—then form."

He adds his own reasons (the cut should advance the story and lead the audience to feel what he wants them to feel) and offers the opinions that most editors are just wild for the newest toys with no clear sense of what they can do.

Besides, he shrugs, it's the only thing he can do with the dated technology available to him here. ("You can bring me a new camera next time," he suggests to Ivo who laughs and promises to do just that.)

"Catch the light," Danny calls to the bartender who now commences his denunciation of Danny's lack of consideration for the patrons but in a moment the film appears on the screen behind and above Ivo.

"It gives a very weird effect," he tells Danny, "looking at it from this angle. I feel like the people are growing, like the way it looks in one of those carnival mirrors."

"Distortion mirrors," Danny says reflexively. He's busy scanning it from the proper angle but he takes Ivo's perspective into consideration and will look at it later to see if he can use any of it. Dissatisfied with something he calls for the lights back on – which elicits further vitriol – and shuts the projector off again. "So why don't you tell me what's really bothering you," he suggests to Ivo.

Ivo isn't quite sure how to say it, that he's come for advice. He hadn't planned it. He had been glaring at his wall when suddenly everything moved and here he was back in Milliways again. He's very glad for it. He's always happy to see Danny. It's just that this time what he wants to talk about –

Well. It's –

_Tim_. He sneaks a guilty glance at Danny who is patiently removing the long reel from a projector that looks like it's from the 50s (it is). He's quiet for another second before he takes the plunge. "I think it was a mistake to fall in love after you." That came out all wrong and if it were any other person – especially Tim – he would be apologizing six ways to Sunday. But the wonderful thing about Danny is that he never needs to apologize about anything, never has to explain himself. Danny is the only person in the world – well, apart from his sister Isabel – who accepts him for who and what he is. Moreover, Danny has the finesse of a rattlesnake though Ivo spent years training him to be diplomatic, and adores it when it is Ivo who says something utterly inappropriate.

Danny can't help but smirk. "If I remember correctly, you told me repeatedly what a mistake it was to fall in love with me."

"You were very young then," Ivo isn't about to go for any comparison between Danny and Tim. That would be very uncomfortable-making.

"And Tim is – 21? 22?"

"You were 18. There is an enormous difference between an 18-year-old and a 23-year-old," he retorts. Isn't there? He cocks his head to one side and analyzes his freshman and graduate students. They certainly are different today. Why when he was a student –

Danny won't let him finish that thought. "Some people are late bloomers," he smiles at Ivo.

Ivo scowls at him. "You were more –" _'mature'_ isn't the right word so he opts for something a bit crass: "You weren't as fucked up as Tim is."

"That's what you think!" Danny snorts. "I was only playing you to get my meal ticket."

"I knew what you wanted." Ivo's no fool. "I just didn't care. If supporting you was the price for getting you, I was game. Tim has absolutely no idea what he wants. If all he wanted was a sugar daddy, I'd be fine with that."

"No you wouldn't," Danny calls his bluff. "You've changed. You want him to love you. And as you say, he has no idea what he feels for you."

Ivo grinds the splintered toothpick between his teeth. "I should just walk away," he sighs. "Sunk costs." But of course that would be impossible at this point. Nothing short of death will tear him away.

"How's the therapy going?" There's a hint of laughter in Danny's voice. He has _an opinion_ of psychiatry.

"He's just a bit more recalcitrant than you were."

"Probably lies," offers Danny from experience.

"Yes." Another sigh. The toothpick is now basically pulp.

"Well that won't get you anywhere," and Danny's laughing out loud this time. But he pauses and adds as a way of consoling the other, "He needs an incentive."

"If something comes to mind, do us a favor and don't keep it to yourself, eh?" The 'eh' is an affectation, adopted from life among Canadians. The bitterness is the product of nearly four years of smashing his head against the wall in frustration. It isn't easy to love someone who won't love you back.

"You're trying too hard," Danny says quietly, starting the projector back up.

"_What?" _ Of course he is trying hard! He's bent over backward to make the relationship work, something he has never done before. He is the drive, the enthusiasm, the money, the rock, the – (he's mentally sputtering a whole listbut Danny's voice cuts in again).

"It's too much pressure on him. When he's not the center of attention, when you have other things going on, isn't he better?"

Ivo admits as much. "You mean need him less so he wants me more?"

"Pre-cise-ly!" A perfect rendition of Ivo's British accent.

"So what are you saying? I should go without him to Antarctica?" The idea is absolutely inconceivable. He wants Tim with him on the trip. It will be a first for both of them, something unique they share.

"Yes," says Danny simply.

"It's been my experience that when I leave him he finds someone else!" Ivo retorts. It's a sore subject.

"So don't leave him alone. Let Izzy stay with him."

"Because that went so well last time…" Dryly.

"If it's fidelity you want, quit chasing young boys." And he smiles again, but not at all unkindly.

"You were! A boy. And you weren't. Unfaithful to me." (Now he's just wallowing in it.)

"I needed you," Danny says frankly. "I couldn't take that chance." And suddenly he is very serious. "Tim needs you, too. He's testing you. That's all. He wants to make you jealous. He just hasn't figured that part of it out yet."

"WHAT?!" Total consternation.

But Danny's called for the lights to be cut again and the bartender is ranting about what is and is not in his job description.

Which leaves Ivo to watch the film from his unusual position and ponder Danny's words of wisdom.


	82. Change

_We walk and talk in time  
I walk and talk in two  
Where does the end of me  
Become the start of you_

~ _Change_, Tears for Fears

_**Change**_

I'm not writing. I'm not doing anything. I haven't done anything since I graduated and moved in with Ivo.

Maybe that's what's wrong with me.

It's incredibly stressful - not having to do anything. So stressful that the smallest task is overwhelming. You can't bring yourself to do it. You'll only do it if someone is flogging you. People who are driven, people like Ivo, they don't get that. They can't understand why we who are aimless – unemployed – are so reluctant to act. Their lives are so structured, the addition of one task is nothing. If they have five spare minutes between 6:55 am and 7 am, they clear their desk. Or their briefcases. Or their wallets.

And then they are out the door.

I am not even up at 6:55 am let alone 7 am or even 10 am. There is nothing for me to get up for. There is nothing waiting for me. And if there is – if I need to clear the sink or pick up the wine glasses in the living room from last night's near-rape or wash the linens – well, that is a daunting task. Something I must do when I have nothing else.

I can't. It's better to be berated by Ivo and let him do it.

And I don't know why.

It's even worse if it's important. If it's a considerable undertaking, you give up before seriously contemplating it. There is absolutely no way you could ever write a novel or address the question of just what you are doing with your life.

Unless the motivation is bigger still.

Huge.

_Towering. _

Unless you are out of your mind with fear of the consequences if you don't do it.

That's how it was for me. I would never have had the courage to change.

If Danny hadn't terrorized me.


	83. God, Man and Cats

_Danny Reyes is the property of Carlos Pedraza and** Judas Kiss.  
**_

_**God, Man and Cats**_

Ivo said Danny was like a cat, it didn't matter where he was – office, home, hotel, car, cabin – he'd curl into a ball and nap. Danny said he did his best thinking that way, when he had less stimulation. He could create an entire story from a single blade of grass bending in the breeze but when he was bombarded with sensory input, it was too much. His mind just shut down. Cats were the smart ones. Less is more, etc.

Ivo wasn't sure why this comeback irritated him. Perhaps he was tired of young people questioning everything he said; they argued from the depths of ignorance, not _learned_ profundity. Perhaps he did not then share Danny's affection for felines. Perhaps he was just lonely and wanted Danny's attention. At any rate he sniffed and said actually, creation was apocalyptic – glacial ice storms and volcanic eruptions everywhere and meteors smashing into the surface of the earth, billions of molecules colliding at rapid rates in inhospitable conditions. That was how it was meant to be. Origins were best found in muddy waters, not silent rooms. Man's attempts to clarify the process in simple equations were futile; creation _life itself_ was complex and did not render to simplicity. (He said it in a rather haughty voice that would have upset Tim, who always felt pitifully ignorant vis-a-vis a professor. Danny however understood him and wrote it off as a passing bad humor.)

Aloud, Danny said if things could not be understood or clarified, there was really no point in doing all that research, was there? Might as well stick with the Biblical account and call it a day. Then Ivo could start enjoying life - like a cat.

Ivo thundered, nonsense! Studying life as it evolved was inherently fascinating and that alone made the time spent on earth worthwhile. Learning was intrinsically rewarding and just because they didn't have answers yet, just because they had been more wrong than wrong in the past was no reason to assume that man would not continue to evolve to a higher intelligence and produce even more interesting suppositions. Why look at how far they had gotten since Ptolemy! He lived for the day when his own intellect was sub-par (Danny doubted that but diplomatically held his tongue.)

Danny said if there was no God, if man's existence was chance occurrence with no purpose, living was pointless; life forms simply appeared and disappeared, an endless cycle of birth and death for no reason whatsoever. Ivo sighed in exasperation with such a "layman's point-of-view" so Danny asked if he would feel the same way if another chance _violent_ occurrence should alter his own existence, say if Danny was struck dead by lightning? Would that experience be intrinsically interesting?

Ivo didn't answer, didn't even want to consider such a terrible possibility. He pouted and said he didn't understand why Danny felt the need to provoke him. Why couldn't they just live peacefully like other couples?

Danny smiled indulgently, having won the argument. "Because love is a very complex thing," he murmured seductively.


	84. Rock Solid

_I'm such a dubious soul,  
And a walk in the garden  
Wears me down.  
Tangled in the fallen vines,  
Pickin' up the punch lines,  
I've just been fakin' it,  
Not really makin' it._

~ Fakin' It, Simon and Garfunkel

_**Rock Steady**_

It took him more than a year to get back on his feet, literally and figuratively speaking. The three bones of his left inner ear were dislocated in the attack resulting in almost complete hearing loss and extreme vertigo. Unable to balance at first, he was sent to a surgeon. However attempts to rebuild the ear only exacerbated his condition and after several months he gave up and fired his doctors. Other injuries had left him with a slight limp, blurred vision in one eye, an incessant buzzing in his good ear and diminished sensation in his right arm and hand. Too furious to apply himself in physical therapy, he spent the next six months on his sister's couch, inebriated, so that he had little recollection of that time. She had offered him the more comfortable guest quarters but memories of Danny haunted him there; he couldn't bring himself even to look at the room let alone enter it. Isabel tiptoed around him, uncertain how to help.

When he had worn out his welcome with his sister and brother-in-law, he packed his few belongings and flew to his parents' home in Australia. His father, utterly at a loss to see his formidable son all but crippled and helpless, offered to find him a position with his company borehole mining fossil fuels. It was a respectable job for geologists, one he had taken two decades early. It had paid for Ivo's and Isabel's education amongst other things. Ivo's scathing retort – that Big Oil lacked the foresight to appreciate the devastating future environmental consequences of society's gluttonous consumption – was so vicious and damning, his father barely spoke another word to him the remainder of the time he was there.

His mother, querulous by nature, pitied her child and while she firmly believed that this was what came from the lifestyle choices he had made, she waited on his every physical need as she had not done since he was very small. She took grim satisfaction in his beaten sickly state and plied him with soup, meat and potatoes to counteract the prodigious amounts of alcohol he imbibed. Thus was Ivo able to pass an additional six months on another couch in another place.

He was busy languishing away when his mother set him off. "I don't know why you mope about," she said in disgust. "You aren't the only person in the world to lose someone."

His violent temper, latent in liquor, reared its ugly head. He'd been longing to lash out at someone, the anger so great he could no longer contain it. Berating her for the cow that she was, he added injury to stinging insult, hurtling a tiny figurine at her. It missed and shattered against the wall but the damage was done.

She spent the rest of his stay hiding from him. His father's only comment was an inquiry as to whether he had enough money to get by. Ivo mumbled that he would find a teaching position in England and two days later his father drove him and his satchel to the airport. He paid for his son's airfare and gave him an additional £7500 in cash and traveler's cheques to tide him over. Ivo thanked him awkwardly and they hugged their goodbyes even more awkwardly. Entering the airport, Ivo thought bitterly that their relationship had always been such – passing strangers in the same house. He blamed his mother.

That was Tuesday and on Wednesday evening he stood on the doorstep of Martin Zeindler's flat, pale, shaking but completely sober. His old friend was astonished to find him there – "No telegram? Nothing to let us know your plans?" – but ushered him in like a mother hen, offering him the rental unit on the ground floor as it was not let for the summer.

Ravaged but lucid, Ivo said he would only stay long enough to set up interviews in London and Leeds where he had connections. Martin said "Pish tosh!" and arranged an interview with Warwickshire the following week. After one month, Ivo was ensconced in the university and the rental portion of the flat. Outwardly he appeared to have returned to normal, burying himself in research and teaching. But to his students he was indifferent and aloof and to his colleagues so professional none of them felt they knew him even slightly. With Martin he did let his guard down some and allow himself to live a little – theater outings, vacations in Spain and Turkey, the long-awaited cruise to Alaska to view the geological formations of the glaciers.

To his sister alone he bared his heart in his missives, railing against everyone and everything for all that had befallen him. The letters were so full of venom that she never forgot them or forgave the men who had caused such a radical change in him. He was a stranger to her; whatever good he had in him lay fallow, his mind a fecund field for hatred and rage. He wanted revenge but though she begged him to fight in the legal system, he could not bring himself to do the deed. "I do not know what all I am capable of," he wrote to her. In the end he made only one brief trip to Nova Scotia – to identify them in the court of law. He never set foot in the province again. He left Isabel and the prosecutors in his stead. His father footed the enormous bill but this he did not learn until after the old man's death. He never knew that he had one parent who loved him more than anything, someone who fought for justice for his son; he never had the opportunity to heal knowing how much his father had done on his behalf.

By the late eighties he was comfortably situated in a tenured position and a permanent resident in Martin's rooms. They squabbled like an old married couple about nearly everything under the sun:

"Ivo! Close the windows!" Martin would bellow into the telephone, wrapped from head to toe in blankets against the frigid wind.

"Hot air rises," Ivo patiently explained.

"Yes, I know that." Peevish. "But this only applies if there is any hot air to actually rise!"

Ivo ignored him and went to bed, the windows wide open.

And into the early nineties:

"I've lost my key again. Trot along and fetch me the spare?" Playing the role of the scatter-brained, as was fitting a middle-aged professor of paleontology.

"You are forever losing your key. What will you do when I am not here to let you in?" He was indignant at the idea of his three hundred pounds trotting anywhere, let alone to fetch Ivo's infernal key.

"I should die without you." Said without any emotion as he opened one of Martin's journals on the table to read and wait.

"I will put it on a chain for you. You shall wear it everywhere and then you will never lose it!" Martin fumed, hoisting his enormous self out of the chair.

"Yes, yes, I shall do just that. Now the key if you please."

Martin's undergraduate students – a boy and a girl – were very excited by the exchange and stared at Ivo in open admiration. To witness the feared Professor Zeindler brought down to the mundane level of common man was positively awesome. The boy was trying to stifle his laughter. Ivo looked at him and then stared thoughtfully at him. He was very attractive, in a boyish undergraduate sort of way, calling to mind another boyish face a lifetime ago.

"Is Martin teaching you well?" he asked the boy, ignoring his female companion altogether. "Is he teaching you to write a blockbuster? Something bold and sexy?"

The boy bit his lip and laughed again, suddenly very self-conscious as all young people are prone to be.

Ivo watched him a minute longer until Martin wheezed into the room, clutching the spare key on a string. "I want to watch you tie it around your neck. I want to know it is never coming off."

"I shall wear it at all times," Ivo said softly, taking the key which remained in his delicate hand, his eyes on Martin's student. "I'll wear it in the shower, shall I?" The question was for the boy, who blushed furiously and refused to look up from his notebook. "Martin, introduce me to your students," Ivo commanded.

"Oh for heaven's sake. Ivo Steadman – that's Dr. Steadman to you!" He glowered, keeping his charges in their proper place. "Timothy Cornish, you may call him 'Tim' and Emily Hadfield."

"Well, Mr. Cornish," he pointedly ignored the girl in whom he had absolutely no interest, "Good luck with your novel." He permitted his eyes to linger one moment more before turning away.

"And close the blasted windows!" Martin groused.

Tim Cornish was too taken aback to laugh.


	85. The Sun, The Moon and the Wind

_"Let your heart guide you. It whispers so listen closely."_

_~ Littlefoot's Mother, _The Land Before Time (1988)

** _The Sun, the Moon and the Wind: A fairy tale_ **

** _By Ivo Steadman_ **

Once when I was sick and stuck in bed for days, Ivo told me a fairy tale about a dragon and a little boy. The dragon was not named Puff and he lived in the Philippines, not Hanalei. And he wasn't at all a nice dragon. He had ill intensions for the little boy.

"The dragon should be named 'Ivo'," I interjected.

"No, Ivo is the knight in shining armor."

"I thought you said the boy was victorious!" I protested.

"He is, with the help of the knight."

"I want him to be independently victorious," I grumbled. I hated that he always had to intrude on my stories.

"Alright, alright. I see that you are the modern princess and not the damsel in distress type of boy and will alter the plot accordingly," he sighed.

"And why am I always a little boy in your stories?" I demanded. "I'm fully four inches taller than you and I was nineteen when we met!" I was 23 at the time and very sensitive about my youthfulness vis-à-vis my older, vastly more clever, dominant lover.

"Perhaps I imagine that you were docile as a little boy," he said pointedly. "Now do you want your fairy tale or not? I have papers to grade."

"Do I get to be independently victorious?"

He sighed again, heavily to show that he was put upon. "Alright, yes, I shall stay out of this one."

"And the dragon lives?"

"Why do you care if the dragon lives? It isn't a nice dragon."

"Because I don't like killing things."

"Alright, alright," he capitulated, thinking furiously as he was suddenly having to rework the entire narrative. "Now can we proceed?"

I smiled at him and snuggled down in the covers, happy to have gotten my way. For once.

_Once there was a - … _**young man** _named Tim who had survived a most terrible shipwreck. His entire family, all of his classmates, everyone who had made his childhood living hell were burned alive in the flames, their frightful screams drowning out the pleasant song of the whales. _

_He floated for days in the warm sea clutching the only remaining piece of lumber from the tragedy, a keg of beer. The construction of the barrel as well as the distribution of its contents was such that the corked end bobbed along the top, permitting our castaway to imbibe the golden brew within._

"How did I get it out?" I laughed. "It isn't as if I had a straw!"

Ivo frowned at me.

_Which he was able to siphon out with a straw that had been tossed carelessly by some ignoramus who failed to appreciate the half-life of plastic and the environmental hazards of throwing rubbish into the sea._

I snorted. He continued.

_Thus was Timothy not merely unafraid of his predicament but actually quite cheerful. Had he been rescued by the golden prince Ivo, he would have been found singing pirate ditties about rum and what have you._

"You said it was beer," I pointed out.

"Yes but the song goes, 'Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum', not 'beer'," he explained.

"I could write my own songs.."

_And other songs he composed during those long water-bound hours. _

"You are an excruciating story teller!"

He ignored me and took great pains to underscore the next episode.

_Alas _**ill will befell**_ the young man_. _He was found not by **the prince** whose **love for him** would have been _**boundless**_ but instead drifted drunkenly towards a remote island in the Philippines where **a rather nasty variant** of the Komodo dragon lived. This particular dragon had eaten all of his siblings, his parents - indeed the entire population - and had grown to such enormous proportions that he was in constant agony, the joints in his legs sorely taxed to propel him about the small island. The dragon's name, by the way, was Martin and he was a lugubrious soul. _

By this time, I was dying laughing. "Does Martin drink all my beer?"

"Hush! Do not interrupt creative genius when it is on a roll. But as a matter of fact - "

_Our Tim knew he was in trouble as soon as he reached the white shores of the Island of Woe –_

"'The Island of Woe'?" I mouthed, shaking my head in disbelief.

_**The **__**Island **__**of **__**Woe **_– he cleared his throat –

_Our Tim knew at once that he was in grave danger as the shoreline was littered with hundreds of empty kegs, for while his keg contained his precious amber liquid, the other kegs onboard had held whiskey and rum which have a much higher alcohol content. _

_He had just begun the herculean task of lugging his lager _

"'Lugging his lager'," I repeated in an undertone. "If this is your attempt at alliteration, it's awful!"

_lugging his lager across the white dunes when didst come the dragon, staggering a bit which heartened Tim as he realized that he had a chance of surviving the encounter. He had the goods, after all. He had only to bargain with the dragon for his life. Unfortunately, Martin was rather hung-over as well as out of his mind from the gouty pain in his knees and the whiff of spirits made reason abandon him completely. He made to seize the barrel and down its contents in one gulp!_

The thought of Martin, who is rather enormous and dragonish, with the keg and the straw on the beach was too much for me. I howled.

Ivo looked very pleased with himself.

_So there they were in the unhappiest of situations: a drunken Tim, determined to keep his keg; a drunker Martin, equally as determined to claim it for himself; and, tragically, no Ivo to lead them to an equitable resolution._

(I hit him with the pillow but I was thoroughly enjoying my bedtime story.)

_Ah! But our Tim was a clever boy and never more so than when battling for booze. He drew himself up to his five foot ten and three-quarters inches –_

I am actually 5'11" but Ivo, at 5'7", refuses to give me that last quarter inch.

_- and stared the shaggy beast – _

"Dragons aren't shaggy," I interrupted.

"And you know this how? We have recently ascertained that birds are related to dinosaurs and actually now believe most species had feathers. "

"Yes but you said this was a Komodo dragon, which has scales!"

"No, I said it was 'a rather nasty variant of the Komodo dragon'. In this case, the woolly sort."

There is just no winning an argument with Ivo in his field. I was stuck with a furry dragon.

"Now quit interrupting! I am losing my train of thought." He glowered at me for effect. "Where was I? Ah, the 'stare-down'."

_Tim and Martin stared each other in the eyes, the former's unfathomed pools of promise, the latter's bleary and tired from age._

"So it's the 'promise' of the potential of my youth you want," I surmised. "But, hold on - how in the world are we staring at one another? How big is he? I can't very well stare him in the eye if I am standing on the beach! Or am I standing on the keg to augment my stature?"

"Quit introducing logic into fairy tales! But since you brought it up, I'll have you know the feared velociraptor was the size of a turkey."

I was trying to imagine the remake of _Jurassic Park_ with turkeys but Ivo's continuation interrupted me.

_Tim stared at him from atop the keg. The dragon, rising to the challenge, opened its mouth to barbeque Tim on the spot, but our hero placed a single digit on its snout and said calmly, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. The heat you emit is enough to evaporate the contents of this keg in fewer than six seconds, roughly the time it would take to roast me. And then where would you be? Without beer or company to get you through this miserable existence!"_

_The dragon was very surprised but recognized the wisdom of Tim's words. His was indeed a most unhappy endurance. He held his breath._

"_I put it to you," Tim continued, his confidence bolstered by his success thus far, "that we have a great deal in common. Here we are - stuck on this god-forsaken island. We both of us like our drink, in varying quantities. We neither of us have anyone to call our own. And wherever is the profit in being alone?"_

_Even in his muddled state, this made sense to the dragon._

"_We two might well be able to pass a very companionable existence here – me, composing my novel, you, my captive audience."_

I was near convulsions. Ivo's lip twitched ever so slightly.

"_Who knows?" Our Tim was completely caught up in the moment. "We might find fruits yonder in those trees from which we could concoct all sorts of umbrella drinks, like they do in Hawaii!"_

_The dragon was leaning on his elbows, his snout resting on his claws so that the smoke from his nostrils trailed upward like that from the peace pipe into Tim's glowing face. And Tim discovered that, like a puff from the peace pipe, the fumes had an effect on him similar to weed. Perhaps it was the prodigious amounts of rum and whiskey the beast had consumed, now etherized into veritable cannabis, but our Tim was soon high as a kite and never is man more creative than when stoned. _

"_We could build a bar! We call them 'pubs' in my country -," he was draped over the dragon's flattish head, admiring the shifting shapes of the clouds – "from the palm leaves and wood. With your brute strength and my brains, we could have the finest establishment in the Sulu Sea!" He was very animated despite his relaxed state and it was catching. The dragon was literally misty-eyed with gratitude, failing to recognize that he was being offered a lifetime of slavery rather than a partnership. So long as he was allowed to partake of the alcohol – preferably in a coconut shell – he felt it was a good deal. _

"_We shall call it," Tim proclaimed in a very grand manner, "'The Sun, The Moon and the Wind', signifying—metaphorically - the various states through which our clientele shall pass as the day draws to its end and their minds reach saturation."_

My side ached from laughing so hard. "Ivo, you are outrageous!"

He bent over to kiss me. "But you liked it?" he asked anxiously. He loved to tease me but he wanted to make certain he hadn't offended.

"I did," I agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing my thumb over the stubble on his chin. And then I said, very spontaneously, "And I love you." I really did love him, despite all our differences. No one could make me laugh at myself as Ivo did.

He grew misty-eyed, leaning into my touch and no papers were graded that evening.


	86. The Measure of Time

Pour les anonymes : 

Un grand merci pour votre soutien ! Merci beaucoup pour toutes vos reviews !

_**AN:** _In my attempt to develop a liking for Tim's character (whom, of late, I have come to dislike immensely), I have written a series of Little!Tim drabbles to better understand why he turned into the machiavellian character he is in both film- and book-verse. I hope that this exercise will enable me to return to Shells to finish it on a more positive note. :)

Happy reading!

~ Pace is the trick_  
_

* * *

_Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving. _

~Martin Amis_, __Money_

_**The Measure of Time**_

I can measure my childhood by a portion of a meter stick on the doorjamb in the kitchen. I say "portion" because somewhere around 85 centimeters the end was broken off. This actually occurred before it was attached to the door frame and covered with varnish to match the rest of the woodwork. Nobody seems to have thought it strange that a broken meter stick was used. Probably my mother said, "I wish I had a meter stick!" and my father went down to the room where things were piled when they had no more use of them and produced one from the sundry items there. And my mother would have kissed him and pronounced it perfect in spite of the reduction in length, so much did she love him.

The stick was placed at approximately sixty centimeters off the ground (I imagine the same stick was used for that initial purpose but there is no corresponding mark on the wood) and nailed in place. From the time I was three, I was made to stand straight up against the stick, my back to the jamb, my heels and head pressed hard against it in the interests of accuracy. I was interested in accuracy, at any rate. My father would then draw a short crooked line beside which he would scratch in an equally crooked hand – the pencil's lead cracking and flaking the worn varnish - _Tim 1977_ and _Tim 1981_ and _Tim 1989_. As I grew older, it seemed a silly tradition and I am bothered today by the archive of my physical development. But as a child I relished the moments I would step away from the wall and my father would exclaim, "How big you are! See how much you have grown?" I felt happy and proud and loved for an accomplishment I had done nothing to achieve. I was loved simply for who and what I was. I would come back repeatedly to the spot and run my finger across it so that the feel – the depth and length and width – is indelibly with me.

Sometimes when I was brave and went swimming with my mother in the sea I would rush back to the house and stand against the meter stick, measuring myself. I was careful to hold my hand very still as I stepped away and therefore very confused that I was not taller than the mark left there by my father. I felt bigger and stronger for being so brave and facing my fears; I thought it only fair that there be a physical manifestation. I did not then understand the correlation between one's sense of self and reality.

I see my childish self clearly now, though that child is a stranger to me. I understand that that happiness, that confusion, that disappointment, led me to where I am today, what I am today.


	87. His better half

AN: Some Isabel love. :)

_Hush, child_  
_The darkness will rise from the deep_  
_And carry you down into sleep_  
_Child, the darkness will rise from the deep_  
_And carry you down into sleep_

_~ Mordred's Lullaby_, Heather Dale

_**His better half**_

"Sleep, my darling." Her lips press against his wet forehead, willing the creases away. He clings to her, gaunt face buried in the softness of her breasts, frantic hands wringing the gauze fabric of her gown. She rocks him like a child, omitting the lullaby that would be so incongruous in this setting.

The nausea from alcohol on an empty stomach hits him and he turns too late to vomit on the floor, streaking her leg instead. She ignores the mess, repositioning him and wiping his mouth with a clean corner of her sleeve.

He's crying again, near-choking explosions in a mouth tightly sealed, his last vestige of control in a life gone so completely awry. Shame and despair, rage and apathy wash over him in waves hot and cold.

He's hiding again. He doesn't want to see anyone, can't bear to be seen.

One hand runs down his back, its gentle pressure an essay to quell the great heaving of his chest. "Sleep," she breathes into his hair, a gentle current to carry him down.

He can't sleep. When he sleeps the nightmares come – running _running _down a street, chased, _hunted. _When he sleeps he wakes up to the reality that _he _isn't here anymore. He fights exhaustion, saturates his mind with pills and liquor to forget. Sweet oblivion that allows him brief respite.

She undresses him and he tries to fight but gravity always wins in the end. He lays passively while she changes him like an infant, cleans his face with a wet cloth and tucks him into a quilt his great grandmother had made a million years ago.

He's warm and groggy now, his angry soul at a makeshift peace. And his mind, a blur of intoxicated chagrin, yields to a restless coma.


	88. On tennis and survival

_For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive._

~ David Herbert Lawrence

_**On tennis and survival**_

Ivo was extremely athletic and felt I should be as well. It was unnatural, he told me, for man to sit all day. We were not so very far removed from our untamed relatives and simply because we were no longer occupied with mere survival as were our hunter/gather ancestors was no excuse for sitting on my bum all day. I needed exercise!

I had once made the terrible mistake of telling him that I played tennis as a child. This is to say, _my mother_ coerced me into playing as her best friend's little boy played and it would give him something to do while our mothers were occupied with their own game. The entire experience was miserable. He, of course, played well for a ten-year-old. I, of course, did not. I was awkward and not built for quick movement. The racket made my arm ache and I hated being outdoors. I wanted to be indoors in my room reading by myself. So of course I made no effort to even try to hit the ball and of course he told his mother and of course my mother was extremely disappointed with me. Another day in the life of little Tim Cornish…

The prospect of playing Ivo was truly terrifying. There was no doubt in my mind he was extremely good. Ivo was good at everything he did. He was just that sort of person. To face him in an arena where I knew I would fail _flail_ miserably was daunting. I took to bed pretending I was sick. He babied me and told me there would be many more opportunities, as if this were any consolation. I cringed inwardly praying the day would never come.

Of course I knew Ivo and Danny played. Izzy mentioned it once, said they were killers on court, determined to best the other. They played ruthlessly, in a way she found breathtaking, as if their very lives depended on it - like sea lions fighting for their mates or a musk ox in the grip of wolves fighting for its life.

That was so alien to me. I didn't want to fight anyone or anything. I slipped through life like water between boulders, falling here, falling there. I couldn't imagine having that sort of passion, that sort of energy. I was completely inert as a specimen. Ivo might have descended from hunter/gatherers but I was pretty certain my lineage was the flatworm, that soft unsegmented parasite.

"Nonsense," said Ivo briskly when I made the comparison aloud. "You're just afraid to live."

I might have felt bad about his words but he followed it up with a ferocious hug and kiss and said, "That's what they teach you, you know. To be afraid. That's how they control you."


	89. Lie with me

**AN**: In the movie, Ivo is made out to be condescending, snobbish about wine and such, belittling Tim for his lack of refinement (he makes the comment about "taste" when he is having dinner with Tim). This is very far from the book character! There is absolutely no bullshit with Book!Ivo. He is as down to earth as they come, consumed by a drive to comprehend things and perhaps a bit unfeeling in his quest but never self-conscious enough to care about his position in the relationship. His aloof demeanor when Tim first moves in is to protect himself from developing any feelings for him. When he learns that Tim is unfaithful to him, he says, "I should have gone on as I meant to when I began... Stayed cool, kept you guessing, kept my feelings to myself. But I didn't because I loved you. Too bad, isn't it? I love you too much for your own good and far too much for mine." This was actually where I first got the idea that Ivo must have been badly hurt in a relationship (hence, the introduction of Danny Reyes). _**Tim**_ is the one who feels insignificant for not having Ivo's education and experiences. _**Tim**_ is the one who introduces his insecurities into the relationship. Ivo simply wants to love him and get on with life. Indeed, Ivo is genuinely shocked to find that Tim is unhappy. He can't imagine what is wrong. Whatever anger he feels towards Tim - and he does periodically flare up and say some rather unforgivable things (though he is always apologetic for losing his temper and saying hurtful things) - stems from Tim's flagrant infidelity. Ivo is first and foremost a family man. Once he and Tim take up with one another, he assumes they are family. "Tim," he says, "I want us to be together permanently. I don't think you've understood that." Tim, of course, has no concept of 'permanent', having never had it in his upbringing.

Réponse à Azerty: Voilà un nouveau drabble qui devrait apporter des réponses à tes questions. J'espère qu'il va te plaire. Merci pour ta review et à bientôt !_  
_

_"Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. _

_But what if we're indifferent to whether we win or lose?"_

― Charles Baudelaire

_**Lie With Me**_

At what point do the lies we tell others become the lies we tell ourselves? When do we lose ourselves and start becoming what others want us to be?

I learned early on to play the game; I lied to please my mother. If I didn't like something, if I was afraid, I knew from experience she would reject me – and that was more terrifying to me than anything else. I craved her attention, her affection. Thus as a toddler, I learned not to cry since crying did me no good. And by the time I was six, I was compliant with her every wish. Already at that earliest stage of my development I was learning to suppress all of my emotions. I bottled everything up tight so that in time I came to feel nothing at all, for her or anyone else.

By the time I had reached the age of eight we were both worn out trying to overcome our fundamental incompatibilities. Eight years is a long time for a parent, I suppose. So we went our separate ways, my mother and I. She sent me away to school for others to work on me while she stayed with my father. And work on me they did - in ways she could never have imagined. At Leythe I found the attention I so desperately needed. I wasn't particularly good at anything but I was pretty and therefore sought after by all the older boys. Even the odd professor now and again, I'm ashamed to say. My confidence grew being the object of desire. For the first time I was loved. Or so I thought. I even imagined myself happy and actually took pleasure in the acts I was asked to perform. How they cherished me when I laid myself bare for them. How they kissed me and promised me pretty things, whispering pretty lies.

It was a rude awakening. I was sixteen when the ugly realization that I was being used - like a woman - hit me. Suddenly they had careers and fiances and responsibilities and I was nothing more than everyman's dirty little secret. Angered, humiliated, I took it upon myself to use others, a revenge of sorts. Following their example I turned to women, callously. But it felt wrong. I felt guilty. At school we had been trained to be gentlemen and my egregious violation of that code made me hate myself. I was a low stinking beast, the type that lived on the dole drinking himself senseless. The type that robbed his mother, beat his wife and raped his children. The type that had no business being alive. I fled Leythe and tried again.

University proved much harder; my brain was lazy from "lack of exercise" as Ivo would say. Still I was able to master it, figuring out what my professors wanted and giving it back to them, more or less. Patching myself back up in my suit of honor, I discovered first that I didn't like sex at all. In fact, I didn't really like people. I didn't like Emily. I didn't like my friends. (I did like learning but I wasn't sure how I felt about Martin; I only knew I needed his approval.) In truth, I didn't know how to be anything more than a superficial friend or lover. I knew all the correct responses, the things I had been taught to say and do. It was the emotions I couldn't summon. How could I – having never known them in my life? I had no idea what I felt, what anything felt like. I knew how to be a gentlemen but the rest of my education was incomplete.

And then came Ivo - like a gentle breeze of summer, a hurricane in autumn, the beer at my wine tasting party. He crashed into me and everything just fell apart. He was an enigma consumed by some inchoate passion that left him hunting, _haunted_. He was seeking but he hadn't found what he sought. I wasn't sure he ever would find it. The question seemed to be changing with everything he touched. But I didn't care about the questions. I only knew I wanted to be the answer to that insatiable hunger.

Ivo wasn't the type to play games but he kept me at arms-length the first six months of our relationship – to protect himself rather than win me (though he succeeded in the latter, not the former as planned). He approached me as he approached everything in life, breaking me down piece by piece so that he could figure me out. In exactly the same way he turned a figurine over to see what it was made of or reread a letter to find the hidden message, he exposed me - thoughlessly, cruelly. He made me question myself - rejecting all I held sacred, dismissing my efforts as unacceptable, peeling my flesh away layer by layer by layer until I was nothing but a raw nerve, a rudimentary life form struggling just to survive. And then –

He challenged me to rebuild myself. Not in his image or my mother's or Martin's or anyone else's. But in my own way by discovering what I felt and thought.

"Don't write about writing!" he groaned from the sofa, sounding a good deal like Martin. "All writers make that same mistake. Go find something new – some discovery in the ancient world, life on Mars, the Red Scare. Figure out what that tells you about your protagonist. Then people will want to read what you write."

So I wrote of spiritual matters and the origins of life and later, much later, when we were both past the pain, I wrote about Danny. And in so doing I uncovered the paths of my own life, was able to see where I had made wrong turns and gotten lost. In so doing, I was able to find myself.

I discovered I loved sex with him. It was terrifying and often painful but the sheer thrill of intimacy _honesty _brought me to life – like a thunder storm or the calving of a glacier or the chemical charges of the Northern Lights.

Like a butterfly emerging from its dark cocoon or the first sunrise over Antarctica after six months of darkness, with Ivo I came to life. With Ivo I learned how to _be._


	90. And in the end

_**Epilogue**_

In the winter the sea beats steadily against the low wall containing it, threatening to spill over and up onto the beach and invade the houses that line the shore. The waves are higher and stronger at this time of year and remind me of another part of the world where such activity would be "tame", to use Ivo's word. The wind rattles the aging shutters and shingles and the old house groans and creaks in protest. We have central heating now, afforded by a professor's steady salary, but I light the fire anyway. Its cheerful lights and crackling are a panacea to the winter blues that plague me and I imagine the sprites race from it to chase the menacing spirits away.

I feel him most especially at these times, when the sea is restless and the wind wild. I imagine he is watching me from somewhere out there, waiting for his moment. Once, late at night, I heard frantic scratching on the window and imagined that he had come, like Cathy Earnshaw clawing her way back from the grave. I lay completely still, frozen in time and space, waiting for him to speak my name.

But he never did.

Ivo would say my imagination is running away with me again and I should be reading _New Scientist_ not _Wuthering Heights_ and maybe he is right. The mind does play tricks.

As do people.

Still, I remember him so clearly, just as if I had known him, just as if he was there beside me. I wonder how he must feel now – shut away, forgotten at the bottom of a box. I want to say to Ivo, all he ever wanted was to be remembered. But Ivo wouldn't permit it. Ivo doesn't bleed, he amputates.

Only with me did he ever bleed.

I wonder if Danny is jealous of me?

I walk to the window and stare out at the blackness. Anything could be out there, between the house and the sea. The wind howls and the sea rages and I believe it. Devoutly.

Anything can be there in the black where you can't see.

Perhaps Danny is out there, desperate for a way back, a way in to our lives. Perhaps that cry in the wind is his, begging for shelter.

I open the kitchen door and leave it until I call Ivo for dinner.

Just in case…


	91. The Book of Daniel

**Warning: Non-explicit references to child sexual abuse.  
**

**Danny Reyes appears courtesy of**_** Judas Kiss (2011).**  
_

_"Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude."_

~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

_ **The Book of Daniel**  
_

Danny had made his life into a film, or that's how it seemed at the time. I felt as if I were watching a movie - a strange silent kaleidoscope of disturbing and joyful images clashing and merging, a fade to black of short scenes with no plot but tremendous depth. _Cinéma Pur _I suppose you'd call it.

There was no order to it, no chronology or logical sequence. But it was Danny through and through, a rare glimpse of _his_ life rather than his characters'. And though he never spoke, though he never laughed or cried, it was the rawest emotional experience I had ever witnessed. A spiritual excursion with a dead man. An exorcism of sorts.

I wanted to die.

His father took him fishing on the boat once he was big enough to haul the traps. Danny got caught in the line – he was so little and the trap so heavy - and it cut deeply into his arm, exposing layers of muscles. His father slapped him for his carelessness and they had to return home, another day with nothing to sell for their efforts.

Fishermen stay out for long hours. They come and go with the tide. They eat, drink, everything that one does in the course of a day on the small vessel. The cabin was cramped but that was where it took place – where Danny's father sodomized him. Danny didn't fight back. He was too little. He knew better than to cry. Any display of weakness would enrage his father. He limped back out to haul traps when it was over and it seemed to me that he was stronger, as if the rage and fear from such helplessness was funneled with renewed determination into the backbreaking task.

As a thief he was an artist. I marveled at his ability to smile at the person he was robbing blind. Once he picked up a kitchen knife and climbed the steps to his father's room. I honestly thought he'd do it, he'd kill him. That cold determined expression. The old man was drunk and snoring. He wouldn't have felt a thing. A wasted life finally at an end. But Danny turned and walked back down the wooden stairs, his eyes troubled and uncertain.

After he'd covered his father's nakedness with a blanket.

He walked with Ivo across the campus and they were so different. Ivo was so young and Danny was so happy. They weren't touching one another, they couldn't hold hands. But it seemed to me they were connected – an unbreakable bond. Ivo's hand would brush the back of Danny's and the electric charge was so great it coursed through me as I sat there in the dark stillness of the forest.

Ivo took Danny to meet his family. They lay in the chill of the early morning, Ivo relishing the prickling of the cold on his face, Danny buried under the covers. Danny hated the cold. Ivo smiled and bent down to kiss him through the thickness of the duvet, his face a picture of perfect serenity. Downstairs the furnace roared to life.

Rarely do changes in relationships happen so abruptly. Ivo was confused by Danny's sudden withdrawal. Danny had stomach aches, didn't want to be touched, stayed up all night writing or figeting with his camera. Ivo worried but didn't press the matter. He was too frightened by what was happening to him, to _them_. He confided in Isabel, as he always did. She was the one who guessed Danny had been abused. He was so uncomfortable in her presence, as if the mere thought of family was agony for him. He was angry and unhappy the entire holiday. It's normal to be nervous when meeting the in-laws, but Danny's hostility verged on something close to hatred, as if he hated her for showing him a life he'd never known, as if she were a genuine threat.

Ivo was even more patient after that. He bought Danny a puppy for Christmas – a cuddly Husky that looked like it belonged in a Disney flick. Of course it was Isabel's dog, Makita, the one she inherited when Danny died. Makita means "forever friend". Ivo named her. She was to be Danny's forever friend, someone he could trust when he felt too afraid to trust people. Danny adored the puppy – who wouldn't? – and kissed Ivo for the first time in a week with genuine happiness.

They planted a vegetable garden that Makita dug up. Danny scowled at her and she wagged her tail, pure adulation. He laughed and forgave her. But Ivo put up a fence to prevent future mishaps and Danny and Makita kissed and licked him for it.

Isabel came to them and she and Danny drove into the city together. Ivo had given him the money for a new camera and Isabel liked to shop on Barrington Street where she could pick up works by local artists for a much more reasonable price than in Vancouver. Danny had an incredible eye for novel art and guided her through the little wooden stalls. He took her through the maritime museum and aboard the ships. He knew the water better than Kit.

Ivo and Danny flew to Glasgow for a conference. They stopped in Cambridge to visit Ivo's old professor and then again in Warwick where Ivo introduced him to Martin. The three of them went out to dinner. Neither man nor anyone at the conference was under any grand illusions about what Danny was doing there, the non-scientist with Ivo. They found him more interesting for being different, and for being so young and attractive and Ivo's lover. Martin was clearly envious, wondering how Ivo did it - got all the hot young things when he was hardly Valentino. Danny used the spotlight to promote his own work and even got Martin to agree to write a screenplay. It was nothing short of a triumph for him.

Ivo was incredibly generous – monetarily, emotionally, socially. He bent his own life around Danny's, to afford him opportunities he could never have had, the poor fisherman's son from a small village. Danny used him as a springboard, a chance to launch himself and realize his own aspirations.

But he never forgot Ivo, never forgot to be grateful. He wrote long letters when they were apart - professions of his deep love for the man who had picked him up in a park and made him his own.

I felt a chill run down my spine. I turned quickly but Danny was gone. And I was lying on the ground with blood running down the side of my face.


	92. Life in a Northern Town

_A Salvation Army Band played_  
_And the children drunk lemonade_  
_And the morning lasted all day, all day_

_~ Life in a Northern Town_, The Dream Academy**  
**

**Life in a Northern Town**

There was only one murder in Williamsport as far as anyone could remember. Old Mrs. Brown up on the hill took in boarders – laborers who drifted along the seaside villages – and one of them tied her up and stabbed her to death. Olivia Truman was the one who found her and she screamed loud enough to wake the dead. Doug Harper heard her from out in his field behind Mrs. Brown's, that's how loud it was, and he ran up at once to help, so he was the second person to see it. In a town the size of Williamsport, news travels like wild fire, especially with the younger ones unemployed and at home all day. Valerie Mercer was driving past and saw the commotion and went to sound the alarm at the fire hall before heading back up.

By noon the population of Williamsport had doubled as neighboring towns came in caravans to witness the spectacle. Olivia was telling everyone over and over again how she found her, how she thought it strange that Mrs. Brown wasn't in church and a chill took her – that's how she said it, "I felt a cold chill run down my spine" – and she _just knew_. So she hotfooted it up the road to check and there Mrs. Brown was – half her face cut away by that psycho and blood everywhere. She'd never seen so much blood.

The townsfolk crowded the windows and doorways so that they could see, too, but the Mounties had arrived by then and were pushing everyone away, telling them all to go home unless, like Olivia Truman, they'd seen something in which case they needed to make a statement. Everyone wanted to make a statement. Everyone had a poor opinion of Stan Cleaver and the low lives that came into town from up the way ("those people from Bear Creek", Alice said meanly and they all concurred). Everyone had been the last person to see Stan the night before. He hadn't been right in his mind, drinking at the fire hall dance, like he was up to something. Someone said they heard him talking violence. Someone said they had been concerned for Mrs. Brown, all alone in that lonely house with that man. No mentioned the possibility that she might have been violated. People didn't talk about those things. At least not in public. And she was nearly sixty! (The older women were secretly thrilled.)

Danny and his friends came running from the creek where they had been fishing and Danny had the sense to climb the tree so that he could see down on the whole setting, even saw the body when they brought it out. He told Jeremy later that he could see her dead eyes, how blank they were. But what he really saw was the crowd and their eyes. They were –

_**excited**_. More so than at a dance or a wedding or even the First of July. They had come to life - the sheen of perspiration and runny make-up glowing on their faces, blood lust coursing through their tensed muscles so that he could see their hearts beating in their fat necks.

The very fact that they were part of something important for the first time in their dull little lives made them –

_**happy**_. As if suddenly they mattered, as if they had worth. It seemed an odd thing to be proud of. It puzzled his 11-year-old mind.

Danny learned something about his fellow man that day. He just didn't understand it until much later.


	93. Touch

_And I find it kind of funny_  
_ I find it kind of sad_  
_ The dreams in which I'm dying_  
_ Are the best I've ever had_  
_ I find it hard to tell you_  
_ 'Cos I find it hard to take_

_~ Mad World_, Tears for Fears

Danny Reyes rightfully belongs at Keystone University in **Judas Kiss**. I'm just borrowing him. :)

**Touch**

It's early, 2 am, and Danny finally comes to bed. He's been avoiding Ivo of late, since Vancouver. They don't talk about it but he knows Ivo is watching him closely. He can't tell him, can't find the words to say what he is really feeling. He isn't quite sure what is going on with him. He just knows he doesn't want to be touched.

He used to long for it, the comfort of human contact to erase the loneliness that plagues him. With Ivo that loneliness had disappeared. He used to love nestling down in Ivo's soft bed and making love at all hours of the day. He thought to himself that, back then, he couldn't even remember what it felt like - being so alone he wanted to die. And then all of a sudden the feeling returned, now with Ivo more so than away from him.

He hates the feel of the other older man's body on his, hates the touch of his lips and the pressure of his groping hands. The thought makes him physically ill.

He feels assaulted.

He shivers as he pulls the covers up tight around his neck, praying he didn't wake him. He should have stayed on the couch but that would bring confrontation, something he fears as much as touch. It's best that these matters remain unspoken.

Ivo turns over and Danny freezes, willing him to stay away. But it comes – the soft arm across his stomach, gentle fingers pushing his hair back, a whisper of a kiss on his shoulder. He wants to jump out of bed and run screaming out of the house. He wants to take a knife and stab Ivo and feel the victory of blood spilling. He wants to die.

He lies there, his heart thundering in his head. He can't breathe, fearing that even that natural movement might invite further unwanted touches. The warmth of Ivo's breath through his thick shirt makes him shudder again. Unconsciously he's braced himself for what comes next but it doesn't come at all. Ivo lies silently beside him, trying to fall asleep.

Danny offers up a silent prayer of thanks to whoever up there might be watching out for him. It was closer tonight than he even wants to think about. It might have happened.

He swallows hard.

But he can't tell Ivo, can't even bring himself to admit that this reminds him too much of his father.

Telling him what a good boy he was.


	94. None of this ever really happened

_I'm on the outside_  
_ I'm looking in_  
_ I can see through you_  
_ See your true colors_  
_ 'Cause inside you're ugly_  
_ You're ugly like me_  
_ I can see through you_  
_ See to the real you_

_~ Outside_, Staind**  
**

**None of this ever really happened…**

I'd be hard-pressed to say who was the more brutal at Leythe – the students or the teachers. Violence is inherent in the system. Children left unsupervised become the most vicious bullies. Adults left unsupervised are worse. We were subjected to humiliation and physical punishment on both fronts, making our school lives utter hell. A trip to the office might leave you unable to sit down for days; they beat us until we bled. But anywhere without an adult presence was equally treacherous; more than one student broke a nose or lost a tooth being slammed into faucets, walls, chairs, and headboards. Neither could we turn to the adults for help. To be labeled a snitch was the worst possible state, making you the object of terrorism from both above and below. Leythe's code of honor required you never to speak of any wrong-doing.

Is it any wonder that the affection of another was so welcome to us in those first few years? Sexual encounters invariably led to praise and treats. I was a "good boy" for complying with his wishes and a chocolate was slipped into my hand. I was petted and kissed and fawned over. Whatever pain there was in the act was certainly no worse than that which came in more menacing forms and, in fact, was almost enjoyable as hearing him groan at the pleasure received through no effort on my part was very gratifying. For me it was the first time I had ever been successful at anything.

More importantly "belonging" meant protection, much as I imagine it does in the modern penal system. Once I belonged to James, I was largely left alone. I might not be able to tell the teachers about the bullies but I could tell James. The network of older boys was such that retaliation would follow any threat to one of "theirs". The one time I was tripped in class, my assailant received such a beating he was unable to return to class for the rest of the week. Yes, there were definite perks to being cute and willing.

We knew what we did was sinful of course. We were taught that in Chapel. The same priest who was fucking my friend Sean after the service would tell us that carnal lust was the most evil of all. Murder even came off as a lesser crime since homosexuals and whores were rightly stoned by angry mobs. It made our secret activities all the more delicious.

I saw James at a concert last year. He seemed bored - as all well-bred upper class types are supposed to be. He had a lovely woman on his arm, his wife, he said - bored by her as well. I wondered what she might say if I told her James had been my lover for two years at Leythe, when I was all of nine. I wondered if she might be jealous of the passionate love letters he wrote to me, things I am certain he never said to her.

But perhaps she already knows all this. Perhaps girls in girls' schools grow up with the same understanding of the world we have – that none of this ever really happened.


	95. Shooting down the suns

_These days of darkness  
Which we've known  
Will blow away with this new sun_

_~ I Will Wait_, Mumford and Sons

**Shooting down the suns**

Once we sat on the deck and Ivo pointed out the constellations to me, naming them one by one: Perseus, Cepheus, and Auriga. He knew when and why the stars dimmed and grew brighter, which could not be seen from the southern hemisphere, and which would change in our lifetime. He knew the myths of their origins and the cultures that worshipped them – the arrogant Cassiopeia hung upside down on her throne, the slain serpent Draco, the horsemen Castor and Polydeuces honored by their father Zeus.

It struck me as incongruous that the man who take great pleasure in mocking Archbishop Ussher (I hadn't heard of him either, he apparently said that something called God had put fossils in rocks in 4004 BC) found these early myths enthralling. He could actually see the hare Largos being eternally hunted by Orion and his dog Canis. I felt that we were back in that period of time when he spoke.

I might have said something to provoke him, force him to defend this knowledge since it was even more backward in thinking than Christianity, shooting down the suns. I might have repeated his scathing remarks about living in darkness – astrology, divination and other "mumbo jumbo" as he liked to say. I might have pointed out that not a single scientist had managed to produce irrefutable evidence that "something called God" did not actually exist.

I might have.

Had I not watched him venture into the woods late that February night and sob so that it rattled my very bones.

"Danny!" he'd cried into the darkness, willing the spirit to come to him.


	96. Wild Wolves

_My soul is a dark place  
And my soul is a lonely one  
And I'm not alone  
I'm not alone_ _~ Wild Wolves_, Athlete

**Wild Wolves**

Danny's favorite animal was a wolf. I wonder what that says about him. Dog people are "honest", "open", "friendly". Cat people are "independent". "_Wily_". I wonder what wolf people are like? Wolves run in packs. Danny didn't run in a pack. "The lone wolf cannot survive." But of course he wasn't. And he didn't.

I have his film and photographs. He took them on his travels with Ivo – to New Mexico and Alaska and places I don't recognize, places I have never been. Photos of wolves stalking prey, fleeing predators; clips of them approaching - warily but unafraid, unaccustomed to the presence of man, perhaps, or perhaps just perplexed by the camera. There were black ones with eerie gold eyes and white ones with deadly black eyes, grey ones with thick winter coats and tawny ones with ratty fur falling off. One kissed the nose of a water buffalo calf and one ran away with a watermelon rind. One ducked from an angry raven's assault and another accepted food from a human hand. They played and fought with him in their midst but they were wild through and through.

Is that what it says about Danny?

Ivo believes adamantly that animals are meant to be wild. He refuses to have a pet. Isabel says pets make people happy, that they offer the unconditional love human beings can not. I never had a pet as a child. My parents were older when I came along and a child was already an imposition. My father seemed fond of animals, though; he used to say he hated Dostoevsky for not being able to go ten pages without beating a horse to death.

I collected rocks as a boy. So I suppose you could say I had pet rocks before it became fashionable for an instant. I didn't name them but I did love their different characteristics and knew each one well from long periods of examining them - the green-and-white variegated ones that resembled tiny cliffs; the polished feel of the purple ones dotted with pink or yellow granite like Callisto; the striped ones that looked like faded miniatures of Saturn. I was fascinated that the same beach could yield so many variations and spent entire afternoons searching for new ones for my collection. I imagned they had come from all over the world, each with its own unique story.

I used to place them in pockets to carry them around. I liked the feel of their weight. I often had so many they made my trousers sag and I had to constantly hitch my pants back up. My mother scolded me for this practice and threw them back onto the beach. I went out later when she was busy and retrieved each and every one of them. I hid them under my bed where I knew she would never look, her house-keeping skills deplorable.

I wonder if there are any universal characteristics for rock people?


	97. Chapter 97

_This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought - the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other._

~ Michel Foucault, _The Order of things_

**The Order of things_  
_**

Ivo was sitting perfectly still in the meadow, observing the play of life around him. A pair of butterflies flitted from flower to flower, one alighting on his sleeve – either by mistake or curiosity; a small grey rabbit chewed on grasses, it's nervous nature manifest in the frequent pauses of activity; a burrowing beetle bumbled along the terrain, falling and recovering his step as he progressed towards his destination, wherever that might be. It seemed a very poetic setting to me. I wished I could paint it. Instead I chewed on my pen and thought of words that might begin to capture its beauty.

"No, it isn't like that at all," Ivo interjected, reading what I had written over my shoulder. "At any second a lizard might project its tongue to catch the butterfly, the rabbit might be eaten by a fox, and some wretched child might stomp on the beetle."

"Must you?" I complained, dropping my pen to underscore my frustration. "Must it always be death and destruction in your world?"

"It isn't death and destruction," he objected. "Those are your blinkered layman's terms that fail to account for the laws that govern nature. You mustn't adopt the tone of so-called 'civilized' man in your endeavor to portray the world around you."

"I'm not," I said, querulous as always when he accused me of falling victim to the narrow outlook enjoyed only by Westerners who lived a sheltered and wholly unnatural existence. "But your way of seeing things kills the beauty of it all. You must admit that a world in which life has a purpose is much more marketable than your scenario of brute survivalism."

"But each life does have a purpose – if only as a food source for another life. Perhaps it is your rigid definition of beauty that prohibits your finding it here in the complexity of life."

"There is no beauty in war and what you describe is a system in which all occupants are set against one another – each struggling to ensure its own survival at the expense of another. That's barbaric."

"That's reality," he countered. "How do you suppose we as a species gained so much power, or we as westerners acquired such wealth? Divine munificence? I can assure you that the exploitation of man by his fellow is what enabled us to get ahead in the game. Whether by position in the pecking order or cunning intelligence, surely you must acknowledge that those who climb to the top of the food chain do so at the expense of others."

"You cannot approve of that!" I cried.

"It is never a question of approval, it is the way of the world. Why is it so difficult for man to face what he is? We are no better than a pack of wolves or hyenas. Why must we hide behind these attempts to legislate suffering – death even! – out of the picture? If man is a superior being, created as they claim by the most supreme of beings, does it not stand to reason that he must rectify these natural tendencies to permit all members of the species to live as equals, each with the same rights and opportunities regardless of their given talents and dispositions?"

"Now you're taking the other side of the argument," I laughed.

"No, I am simply pointing out that if the order of things is so appalling to the human species, then more hypocrite they for doing nothing to change it."

"I reiterate, you have switched sides," I smiled at him. "You're starting to sound like a socialist. Or a believer."

He stiffened at the suggestion. "I do not concern myself with the politics of man as it is a futile expense of energy. And as for any 'God', thank you but I shall put my faith in science which is real and tangible."

"And also formed in the minds of men," I purred under my breath.

"What did you say?" He frowned, guessing correctly that it was nothing he would want to hear.

"Nothing," I smiled serenely at him. "Nothing." And I returned to my portrait of the scientist in his natural element.


	98. God, Mother and Ivo

_A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. _~ Madeleine L'Engle

**God, Mother and Ivo**

"Your mother was a Methodist!" I declare, a bit triumphant at my newly-honed deductive reasoning skills.

Ivo looks nonplussed. "My mother wasn't religious but I suppose she was born Church of England. We attended the Catholic Church with my nanny in Venezuela and I visited a mosque once or twice in Baghdad with my Arab nanny. What in the world are you talking about?"

"Oh." I am at a loss. "E.P. Thompson's mother was Methodist. That's why he spent nearly 900 pages railing against Methodism in _The Making of the English Working Class_." There goes my theory.

Ivo looks thunderstruck – either because I have read E.P. Thompson or because I remembered what a classmate said about his upbringing or because he has absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Very likely all three, I think.

"I was trying to figure out your intense dislike of religion." And then, softer, "It was a joke, Ivo."

Ivo doesn't do jokes. He's far too serious for such things. I wonder if all scientists are this way or if this is just his own idiosyncratic nature.

But then – he wasn't always this way. Before, when we first met. On our honeymoon. The nuclear reactor outside his window that kept his euphoria in check while he wrote a reassessment of the geological structure of the Isle of Man. That was before he knew me, devil that I am. He was light and easy and happy then.

Before I ruined it all.

"I didn't know you lived in Venezuela and Baghdad," I say softer still.

"You never asked." Short and a bit cold. It's a reminder that I am so taken up with myself I have cared little for his existence.

"Tell me about it," the softness is genuine now, feeling. This is a side of Ivo I have never seen, the little boy of whom Isabel occasionally speaks. It must have been marvelous, knowing him then.

It's a side of him I desperately want.

"I hardly remember attending religious institutions. What's all this about?"

So much for intimate moments. "I told you, I am trying to reconcile your hatred of the Church and denial of God."

He slams his newspaper down. Now he's just irritated with me. "If I have expressed antipathy towards that institution it is because they are so determined to blinker their followers and deny scientific fact. Bishop Ussher once said that his God hid fossils in rocks to trick man."

"Didn't Bishop Ussher die in 1656 or sometime around then?"

"Not much has changed," he snaps.

Clearly I've lost the moment. But won the battle. He picks his paper back up but I can tell this talk has agitated him and he is having difficulty concentrating.

I eye him thoughtfully, chewing on my pen. "Your mother was a prude!" I'm just playing with him now.

"Right!" He stands abruptly. "I'm going in to the office."

I laugh quietly. It will make for a good existential comedy at any rate.


	99. Seize the Day

**AN**: The scene in the book where Ivo tells Tim he will see him in three weeks (Tim begs him to come to N. and Ivo says no but then shows up) is a whopping two pages, one of which is devoted entirely to Emily, half of the other describing Tim – "breathless" - at seeing Ivo walk up his beach. I felt an exploration of what went on in Ivo's head was in order as Tim then spends several pages telling himself that Ivo had to care for him, else why would he have cancelled his Christmas plans to come to N.?

This, then, is Ivo's story of what transpired between the night Tim wrecked Emily's car and Ivo abandoned his plans and showed up on the beach. While this rendition of Ivo seems very contradictory to the character we know and love, it is very much in keeping with his portrayal in the early days with Tim – where he appears cold and indifferent and Tim is out of his mind wondering if he's done something wrong to make Ivo this way. But then, the book characters are walking contradictions – hot and cold, here again there again. Which is what makes them so fun to play with. ;)

_Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up. _

~ Wyndham Lewis

_**Seize the Day**_

It was worse than he dared acknowledge, the yearning in his belly that shattered his concentration and keept him up at night. What a fool he'd been! Allowing the boy to approach him. He should have nipped it in the bud in the elevator and set him straight then and there. It had gone entirely too far. He'd been thinking without his brain again, never a good idea. For one decade he had been blissfully free of entanglements. Ten years of phenomenal productivity – a book and more than twelve articles. Three thousand six hundred fifty two point forty-two days of detached focus, requisite for the true scholar. Sixty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty-eight point one hours of time alone to perfect his theories (he subtracted a rounded twenty thousand for time wasted in the classroom and office hours; that time wasn't worth an exact calculation. Time passed in the pub with Martin, however, was classified as 'Productivity' – invariably that man had something interesting to throw in the pot).

And now this.

Little Timothy Cornish. (he was actually taller than Ivo but Ivo considered all undergraduates lost boys, especially _English majors_. He snorted a little at the thought.)

He should never have let him into his bed. He shouldn't have answered the door with Martin away. He should have known it was trouble.

No one ever came to the door for him.

Except Tim Cornish.

He was flying to New York for Christmas to meet an old Oxford friend and that was that. The boy be damned – he could suffer the three week break until they saw one another again. Ivo had more important things to do. He wasn't going to start allocating precious resource hours to some English major who wanted to be a novelist. He snorted again. What was it with everyone these days wanting to write? They had nothing to say. Bloviating their secret sexual desires or lamenting their inability to write (mentally he underscored his own writing prowess over the past decade and thought even less – if that were possible – of the younger generation).

He had allowed himself four hours to get to Heathrow. Even on the train, he hated being rushed were he to miss a connection. And it was rather nice to be able to sit in the busyness of the airport and read Trollope – surely one of the great pleasures of civilized life.

Why couldn't the writing world produce more Trollopes?

He was leaving his car in Martin's garage, that man having left for Dover the week before. He'd parked it earlier that morning but now he thought he might double check to make certain he hadn't left the lights on or something stupid. A dead battery would certainly be grumpy-making upon his return. He'd have to shop for groceries as soon as he landed; he never left anything in the refrigerator when he was away. He planned a week in advance, carefully purchasing only that which would combine with the existing fare so that his last meal was entirely leftovers and the rest went to the stray cats in the alley. He hated waste, the scourge of the modern world.

He went downstairs to check the car, taking his bags with him and locking the doors. He didn't want to make a second trip upstairs. Waste of time and energy. He hated people who always duplicated their steps. Why couldn't the world be more orderly? Why was everything so inefficient?

He thought of Tim Cornish and his spontaneous ways. Waltzing into the elevator on a whim. Now there was an accident waiting to happen. The boy was like the weather –one never knew what he might do or say next. That sort of behavior was best confined to nature, it had no place in the affairs of men. What if everyone started behaving like a hurricane or volcano? Then where would society be? A bigger mess than they were already in. To add tumultuous emotion to all this greed and ambition would be anarchic.

He had placed his luggage in the boot by mistake. This was what came from thinking about undergraduates instead of his plan for the morning. His mind was wandering. Save that for moments alone in the natural world when no one was watching him.

He was alone in Martin's garage with no one watching him.

And his mind was on the last night he'd spent with Tim, that soft warm body lying on top of his. Ivo hadn't slept a wink, wanting to savor every moment of it. Well there you have it! Taking up with hot young things led to sleep-deprivation, as if he needed anything else to keep him from resting at night like all normal people.

He closed the boot without removing the luggage and stood thoughtfully for a moment. The wonderful thing about modern travel was that if one missed a connection, one could always get another flight, often not too far off the mark. Aldeburgh was an easy distance with good road. He'd have ample time to nip up there, wish the boy a happy Christmas, see if other happy things followed and still make it in plenty of time for his holiday plans. He and Jon corresponded regularly; it wasn't as if they absolutely had to spend every minute together. And he'd been in New York too many times as it was. It was a rather noisy polluted city. He didn't actually relish time spent there. Danny had liked it. It was the only reason they went so frequently. He exhaled and forbad himself to think about Danny, especially at this time of year. Some things never stopped hurting.

Aldeburgh, by happy contrast to New York City – well, he'd never seen the Suffolk coast. Perhaps there was something interesting there. One should know the geologic structure of one's entire country before venturing off elsewhere. He might find something of note there, might even be able to write his paper for Glasgow there. He could check in to a hotel and spend his leisure time meandering up and down the coastline. Tim probably knew it well. Authors liked writing about the sea, helpless romantics that they were. He'd just pop over to Suffolk and see what was what. He could make New York for New Year's if it came to that. Jon would understand. Things did come up in life. One couldn't always live according to the plan.

He opened the garage door and backed out, forgetting to lock it as he drove away. He wasn't entirely sure how to get to Suffolk but it was east and road signs would save him when he was hopelessly lost. He might have stopped for a map but that would waste time and he was eager to get to his destination. As luck had it, it was a popular vacation spot and signs did indeed come to his rescue. He had no trouble navigating the course, though he applauded himself for his cleverness at not taking more than one wrong turn. Once in the town proper, he headed directly to the shoreline and checked into the Kestrel, the largest hotel he could find. (He remembered Tim saying he didn't live far from there when the boy had mentioned it as a possibility should Ivo choose to come and visit.) He walked out to the beach before he even unpacked his bags.

He didn't have Tim's address, he suddenly realized. But it wasn't a terribly long stretch of beach and he was a terrific walker. He could probably make the full circuit before the sun set and just leave the rest to chance. He meandered first north, noting, as he always did, the variation in the pebbles. They were similar to those of other beaches he'd explored a decade ago with Danny. He watched the water instead, quiet pale brown waves trundling up to his feet, gently rolling the round rocks over, leaving them glistening in their wake. It was rather pretty but he suddenly felt sad and changed direction. The houses here were dispersed and he felt he'd gone too far from the hotel.

Southbound was exactly the same but he kept a closer eye on the houses. He was a mile from the hotel and starting to despair when he spied him. Smiling a little triumphantly he turned and climbed the slope towards him. "Not a fossil to be seen on your beach," he said when he was close enough.

"Aren't there?" Tim said somewhat breathlessly. "I've never looked."

"A very tame English beach, a pussycat of a beach." His manifest happiness softened the condemnation, so that the last syllable sounded more like a purr.

Tim just looked nonplussed.

"Right," said Ivo, as if they'd been together all day, all week, as if they'd come to Suffolk together. "Tea, then?"

Tim laughed happily as they trudged up the wet rocks back to town.


	100. Best Friends

_ Things are never quite as scary when you have a best friend. _

~Bill Watterson

**Best friends**

Isabel says boys make the best friends and there was only one girl she was ever really close to.

And Lynette died of cancer.

Of all her male friends Ivo is absolutely her best friend. He is the perfect gentleman she wishes her husband would be. _Could be_. He gives her the coat off his back when she's cold and shares his last cigarette when it's late. He holds the door for her even when he's rushed and listens attentively when she speaks. He's the first one she tells when something wonderful happens.

Or something terrible.

He's never two-faced but he won't tell her the truth if he knows it will hurt too much. He knows her inside and out. He's the first one to knock her down when she's out of line and the first to pick her up when she falls, the first to say "Bollocks!" and the first to beg her forgiveness for going too far.

It had always been that way, she said, since they were small children. He hit the playground bully who threw her doll into the mud and introduced her to all his friends. He included her in every game, even football and rugby. He taught her how to swim and fish and to stand up for herself. They built a fort in the woods that no one else knew about and spend hours there, just talking and thinking out loud. He tutored her in math and science and even wrote one of her papers.

He taught her to dance and even – she really hesitated before confessing this one – _to kiss_. He co-signed on her first car loan and helped her remodel her first house. They spent the first month of her marriage painting the Vancouver house inside and out while Kit watched football in the small bare living room.

He got the scoop on every guy she dated and told her which ones were gay and which ones were hopeless. He was the first one to tell her she was with the wrong guy - even at her wedding – and the first to threaten to break the bastard's balls. He made life in high school bearable and came to her rescue in college. He kept all of her secrets, hid her birth control from Mother, took her side in every family argument. He lied for her, gave her money when she was destitute and gave her a home when she had nowhere to go. He carried her when she was injured and held her when her heart was broken.

He helped her to bury her hamsters and dogs and three-day old daughter.

He never tried to steal her boyfriends.

She looked away when she said that. It was still an uncomfortable topic for both of us.

I didn't know what to say. I'd never had a best friend, brother or otherwise. I'd never had anyone stick up for me. I'd never had anyone to tell my secrets to. I had a different face for every person and so many that I could barely keep up. I'd never trusted anyone. I couldn't imagine how that felt.

She took my hand and squeezed it tight. "You have me," she said quietly. "And Ivo, too."

I swallowed hard and didn't answer.


	101. My life

_**My life**_

The routines are different now, and then very much the same. Kit and Isabel stay in a B&B one street over, Ivo's inability to tolerate upheaval in the house exacerbated by old age and arthritis. Isabel and I still make a furtive effort at the traditional meal, saved almost entirely by the advent of pre-cooked packaged food that actually tastes like the real thing. She microwaves it and I put it on a dish so that it looks legitimate and we share a snicker in the kitchen, toasting with a shot of Ivo's best whiskey. Ah, modern life!

Kit and Ivo are content to watch the football matches and grumble about politics and the younger generation. Because things were _oh so much better _when they were young.

And not suffering from the aches and pains of age.

I helped him make his snowman yesterday. It was disproportionate and lumpy but no less a masterpiece than any other in the years past. It's simpler these days – a carrot nose and button eyes, no scarf or pipe or bowler hat – and I declared heartily that it was the best one yet. He frowned at me, pale blue eyes assessing me, clearly discontent. But, then, he is always discontented. Always was. That's half his charm.

I've learned. How to ignore his gruff rebukes and accept him for who and what he is. Much as he accepted me in my deplorable state decades ago. Take the good with the bad and all that. That's what long-term relationships are.

Back in the house I open my father's "Sergius", the Tolstoy safe that hides my treasures. It is the only thing I have never shared with Ivo. It was my father's secret, passed on to me. A rectangular wound in an old book that has always served as our repository, named Sergius after the first short story in the collection and the only one to survive the knife. From it I pull my pebble collection - my prayer beads, the talismans that steady me - and my last surviving picture of Danny.

He's in a field, surrounded by high wire. It might be a park. It might be a prison yard. It's a dark landscape, barren, lit only by a single streetlight that crowns him. And lordly, he stands over his sole subject - a short, stout snowman with a carrot nose and button eyes. He's grinning at me, those wolfish features mean and tantalizing. He plays rough, I imagine. He would have eaten me alive.

Then.

But not now. Now I know how to tame him.

I run my thumb across his pretty face and, thoughtful, put him back in the vault.


	102. Another world

**Another world**

I followed Danny into the past, those memories made shadowlands by time. We sat on a bench at the edge of the wooded expanse and he pointed to the star-studded sky much as Ivo had done a year before. We watched one star fall and he laughed and said it was his soul up there. I wasn't entirely convinced he was joking.

Then the stars begin to fall in great number, one after the other, so that the sky itself was a tremendous meteor shower - a great explosion and fizzling of lights that illuminated the world around us, culminating in a grand finale of silent fireworks that made me shiver with excitement and fear. And when the last star fell, even though it was but one and should not have mattered so very much, all around us went black. I couldn't even see Danny's face in the void. Nervous, I opened my mouth to speak but he silenced me. And so we sat there, staring at nothing, saying nothing. We waited a full hour - or so it seemed, time passes so slowly in nothingness - and then I felt the weight of his arm around my shoulders.

"Come," he said softly and without warning we dropped down into the dark.

I found that I was sitting in my own living room and just across from me my mother and father were playing a board game. I gasped but the sound must have been inaudible as nobody looked up. But how very different they were! There was a bright energy around them I had never seen before, a lightness of spirit that was catching. Even the house seemed newer for their presence, though it was already a century old. The wallpaper was tightly in place, not sagging or hanging down in sheets as gravity reclaimed it. The furniture was elegant in its old-fashioned upholstery, polished perfection in antique symmetry. The same pictures I knew so well growing up were there on the walls, but oddly inoffensive; they were heirlooms, histories of my family. I found myself admiring the handsome faces, curious and not the least bit resentful.

I surveyed my parents with great interest. They were very much in love with one another, just as they would be in the decades to come, just as they would be after my arrival. But for some reason it made me smile, seeing them this way, it made me happy. I had never known them young. My mother was nearly forty-seven when I was born, my father ten years her senior. As a child, I had assumed that all parents were old. I couldn't imagine having a young playful parent. I was fascinated to view them healthy and lively, optimistic, out-going. They were perfect for one another, an enviable couple. They looked like they belonged out to dinner with friends, in a nightclub or at the theatre. Such a pretty pair, they belonged in the public eye. But I wasn't bothered that they were content staying in. It suited them. They were perfectly situated.

I felt Danny's hand on my back and I pushed away in protest. I didn't want to leave. I felt comfortable in my own home, wanting to be with my parents, for the first time in so very long. The past is like another world, another chance. I felt that if I stayed there in that moment, it might all turn out alright, I might be alright. But he took my hand and accepted no resistance.

His prisoner, I followed him back into the blackness.


	103. Love in the office

AN: This would have been a Milliways scene. If I had someone to play Danny. Instead I wrote the scene for myself.

Danny Reyes belongs to **Judas Kiss** and Carlos Pedraza. The film Ivo mentions here is actually from that movie; Danny tells the panel that his next film will be one where gay people dominate the society.

_**Love in the Office**_

It's Friday morning and Danny is sitting in Ivo's office thumbing through an Alaskan tour guide. He doesn't have classes on Fridays and he's waiting for Ivo to finish his class notes so he can have the computer. It's 1985 and office computers aren't entirely a new thing for scientists. Most research departments have them. Acadia University actually has several available for its research faculty. But Ivo has his very own. He simply has too much data to run and it would be inconsiderate of others. Therefore he purchased one from his own income. Which makes him different.

As if he needed something else to accentuate his different-ness.

Computers in the 80s are nothing like they are today but they are nonetheless marvelous. Apple is about to arrive on the scene in the States but Ivo would have opted for an IBM anyway. IBMs are arcane, as suits a scientist and his cameraman boyfriend. Danny likes to tinker with technology. He'll tell you there is no point if you can't take time figuring out what it can do, but just between us, he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. He never had the chance to have it handed to him, he stole everything he ever owned. Up until he got Ivo. He doesn't have to steal anymore but it is ingrained in his personality. And if you said "Apple" to him, he'd sneer and say it was for simpletons. But that's just loyalty to that dinosaur of his.

Ivo loves having Danny in his office. He still can't get enough of him. Even if Danny were physically joined to him at the hip, it would never be enough. They could never be close enough. Ivo threads the continuous paper onto the tractor feed of his dot matrix printer and types in the command and the thing whirs and grinds and then loudly taps out the essay questions for today's exam. He watches it start and then turns to the much more enjoyable task of watching Danny read.

How did anyone so beautiful and near-perfect fall into his lap?

He says, "If you see something that catches your interest, let me know. We have the first two weeks to explore."

Their plans are just taking shape. Ivo's landed a coveted lecture spot on a cruise ship. Imagine getting paid to vacation! He can hardly wait.

Danny grunts. He's looking at photos of wolves in the Denali National Park and thinking he wants to film them. It was never his intention to be a National Geographic film maker but wolves fascinate him. He tells Ivo he was one in an earlier life (they disagree on such things as reincarnation but Ivo fervently believes that Danny is part-wolf).

Ivo sees that Danny is focused on other things and turns back to watch the printer spit out the sheet, still attached to its mates, now covered with neat lines of print. He carefully tears it from the rest and removes the sides. The office will duplicate it for him on the mimeograph machine. It's cheaper.

He glances one more time at Danny and returns to his desk to set things up for him. It's those little acts of consideration that demonstrate love. Danny could do it himself but Ivo would prefer he spend his time writing his new script. It's to take place in a futuristic society in which heterosexuals are the minority. Knowing Danny, it is bound to create tsunamis in the world of independent film. Ivo smiles, perhaps at that thought or just Danny in general, collects his books and case and walks to where Danny is seated. He bends down to kiss his rumpled black hair. Danny doesn't bother to comb it anymore. He didn't do it for eighteen years. He only did it to get Ivo. And he has him now. He can relax.

"Bye," says Ivo softly, wishing he could stay. And then he calls back as he walks away, "Be good."

Danny casts a inscrutable look at the retreating figure and stands to resituate himself on the other side of the desk in Ivo's chair. Half the joy of having a boyfriend is that feeling of possession. He loves sitting in Ivo's chair, surrounded by Ivo's things. He scoots forward and then freezes when he reads the note Ivo has left for him on the open document.

"If you knew how much I love you, you would run away."

He contemplates that for a while before he can even think about his script.


	104. Running to stand still

_I've been standing here my whole life _  
_Everything I've seen twice _  
_Now it's time I realized _  
_It's spinning back around now _  
_On this road I'm crawlin' _  
_Save me cause I'm fallin' _  
_Now I can't seem to breathe right _  
_Cause I keep runnin _  
_Runnin from my heart_

~ Adam Lambert, _Runnin'_

_**Running to stand still**_

I realized that much like a terrified rabbit frozen before the predator descends, I'd been standing still my whole life, bracing, ready to flee the ever-present danger. The illusion of flight was made possible by my circumstances. I'd left home at the formative age of eight and never felt I belonged under that roof again.

If I ever belonged to begin with.

School and college are in and of themselves transitory and I relaxed somewhat, safe in the knowledge that movement was in the very near future. Friends were like garments, the older the more worn and eventually shed when they served no further use. Lovers - of which I had precisely two prior to Ivo - were slightly more useful in function but equally disposable.

I remember thinking - when Ivo said to me, "Tim, I want us to be together permanently. I don't think you've understood that." - how can anything be permanent? And why would anyone want that?

I remember thinking that shortly before fleeing for my life.

Yet how I cherished the idea of infinite togetherness with Isabel in those few days I was with her. I imagined us a working couple, me in some job - what does one do with an BA in English Literature? - her, teaching. We'd be poor but somehow things would work out, somehow mundane things like money and rent wouldn't matter. Somehow we'd shine in spite of our troubles. I spent the two weeks leading up to the island fantasizing about our _permanent_ life together. It's as if, once Ivo planted the seed, I couldn't get it out of my head. And Isabel, married, transitory, was a safe place for me to practice. That was the real attraction.

I'd only mistaken it for love.


	105. Into the fire

**Into the fire**

Ivo always knew he was gay - knew it viscerally at birth, the same way he knew his father was his preferred parent and his sister his other half. Knew it at the age of two the way he knew that he disliked eggs in any form and harbored a strong aversion to hot weather. Knew it before he felt the first stirrings of desire in his tiny organ and long before he perused the magazines his school mates procured from older brothers and realized he was the only one not staring at the female anatomy.

Ivo knew he liked boys. Period. He liked all ages, all races, all physical types. He liked athletic boys who made his muscles work for domination and intellectuals who made his mind quake. He liked artists who showed him that living was one dimension and creation another and laborers whose simple existence he coveted. He liked the look and the feel and the smell of other males. A decade before he and the Arab boy he encountered in the Baghdad market tried their hand at oral sex, he was keenly interested in the male touch. He relished the rare physical contact with his father, those moments when he would press up against the man and feel the hard heat of his body melding with his own. He welcomed unabashedly the sensation aroused when riding his steed - his cousin - to rescue the Princess Isabella. It was his favorite game henceforth and even at the age of ten, when such childish games were to be set aside in favor of gentlemanly pursuits, he still tried to mount the older boy. He was a sensual animal, driven by pure instinct and his mother's utter negligence in educating her son on propriety with regard to the physical urges meant that they developed unchecked.

The years spent in foreign lands afforded him extensive opportunities a proper English boy would never have known. The roaringly masculine culture of the Latinos and the gentle tactile world of the Arabs educated him in ways that would have made his mother cringe. The secrecy of the Chinese and the underground of the Europeans taught him subterfuge. The former instilled an appreciation of the sexual arts; the latter, a quietude that would serve him well throughout his life.

He learned early on to hide his preferences from others – to save himself embarrassment as well as parental reprimand. Like so many of his kind, he discovered whole arenas of contact that permitted surreptitious exploration, namely sports. An intellectual child, it might have seemed contrary to his disposition but he threw himself into every sport imaginable and his mother, bewildered, permitted it as she really had no choice with her obdurate son. And so he participated in wrestling, reveling in the sensation of the tense body thrashing underneath him until he tamed it; in swimming, that weightless suspension in a man-made current that pulled him this way and that and gently bumped him into others; even in the brutal combat of rugby, his fleet prey crashing to the wet earth beneath him, sweat-soaked and mud-stained.

He always knew he would be dominant, that he could never be the effeminate character parodied in film and literature. His maleness was as integral a part of his character as the color of his eyes, imbued in the womb when Isabel was made female and he was chosen to be a man; steady and sure in its development; unshakable in its quiet strength. So confident was he, he refused to marry as did his classmates, opting for bachelorhood over false representation. He neither trumpeted his sexual preferences nor hid them from his friends. He simply _was_ and what others thought mattered little. It wasn't that he wasn't aware of discrimination, real and potential; it's that he felt no need to rebel against it. Focused entirely on questions that intrigued him, those conundrums from the past so desperately in need of answers, he all but ignored the world around him. Indeed, he might well have been driven to the brink of insanity like so many mad geniuses before him.

But he was much too rational for that.

Very aware of his personal needs, he set aside weekends and holidays, structured time for incursions into the outlawed existence he relished. There, he rarely smoked or drank and shunned entirely the drugs prevalent in that milieu. He didn't want anything to cloud his mind and diminish the sheer pleasure of intimacy. He was a manic lover, more real than most could handle. There was nothing he wouldn't do or try in his search for understanding. There was a raw honesty to him that burned many and frightened others. Like the surface of the sun, the intensity of his very being left scarred bodies and charred nerves in its wake.

Until Danny.

Danny was all swagger, an attitude much deserved, and rose to any challenge, the more unattainable the better. He was a heat seeker, bold in the face of fire, resolute in conquest. That he sought Ivo out should have come as no surprise to anyone. Ivo was everything he dreamed of, everything he craved.

Everything he feared.

Like Athens and Sparta coming together, theirs was a warriors' fusion of power and creativity, a violent merger of complex intellect and artistry, pristine emotions that somehow retained their purity in the cauldron.


	106. Childhood Games

_The savage in man is never quite eradicated._  
Henry David Thoreau

**Childhood Games**

Ivo and Isabel were terrorists when they were little.

Their mother prided herself on her iron discipline, her domination of husband/household/neighbors/town. And where the twins conformed outwardly to appease her, inwardly they retaliated. Nothing so tiresome as frogs in governess's beds. Oh, no. Ivo trapped a Brazilian Wandering Spider, a creature so nervous and aggressive by nature even its bite was painful and the neurotoxic venom left the victim sweating in agony.

The snake in the laundry was the Golden Lancehead.

That no one ever died in their exploits can only be attributed to Heaven above.

Isabel slipped Rhubarb leaves in the salad and a dead rat in the pie for the guests and rubbed the white sap of the Manchineel on the banister for her mother's soft palms. When her inferiors looked at her and hissed that she was a witch, she told them regally, coldly, in Portuguese or Spanish or Arabic that she would flay them alive if they told her mother. With Ivo standing at her side, she was very convincing.

The neighborhood children feared them as well. Ivo was born with a Napoleon complex and the needle sword he precariously wielded was real, inherited from his Spanish great-grandfather. While the bigger boys should have bullied him by right, they respectfully skirted the Steadman twins, whispering among themselves that they were white devils.

But most shameful of all were their sexual exploits. At the age of 13, and virtually identical in Ivo's pre-adolescent casting, they tortured the most respected members of the community. Isabel would lure them in so that Ivo might play with them. And what was a married banker, a solicitor, a priest to do? They chose their victims well.

One who eagerly reached between the child's legs to discover the ruse didn't really care about the gender and continued to press against Ivo's thigh. It was the lad's first successful encounter and he proudly showed Isabel the wet stain on his shorts. She was duly impressed and they chose to target the Ambassador next.

"You never participated?" I asked curiously, trying not to enjoy the fact that others had done some jolly rotten things in life as well.

"I was a girl, Tim," she laughed. "Girls can't do that sort of thing without being ruined. It would have made me soulless."

I pondered that, the difference between growing up and male and female. It was true. James might have taken a girl from the neighboring school to a dance but at the end of the day, I was the one pressed up against the wall. I wondered if that was the reason for the rampant homosexuality at Leythe.

"It can't be easy being a girl," I said humorously to deflect the conversation back to her misdeeds.

"Or a boy," she said seriously.


	107. The Dying of the Light

The day Ivo died a solar storm erupted on the surface of the sun, invisible to the naked eye but creating a spectacular sunset. The great fiery mass hovered above the horizon long past its appointed hour, a grand display of splendor and beauty for the living.

I knew he was gone even before I went to check on him. He'd been fretful for weeks, no longer able to get out of bed on his own and falling repeatedly in his determination to retain his dignity and independence. He found fault with everything the nurses and I did to assist him, berating us and crying in frustration that he could no longer find the words to communicate his needs. Apahasia was taking its toll, intermittantly but steadily.

I knew because before he fell asleep forever, he took my hand in a way that told me he wanted me to stay, something he had not asked of me for days.

"Shall I read to you?" I proposed, knowing he would nod off long before I finished the first few pages.

"Sing," he growled weakly, summoning some of the old imperious Ivo. His physical discomfort had ruined his good manners decades before.

Atonished by the request - for I am hardly a singer and Ivo is tone deaf - I laughed low to myself and launched into the aria from Rosenkavalier. I wondered if he might remember it and to my delight he parroted back my terrible translation from so many lifetimes ago when we waltzed on the beach under the starry starry sky.

"_Without me, without me, every day is a misery, with me, with me, no night is too long_."

I kissed his hand, trying to calm my own trembling at the memory of the beginning of our torrential love affair. Had we once been so passionate? "You were a magnificent dancer," I murmured.

"I know," he said flatly, completely lucid. "I was five times grand champion ballroom dancer in college."

I snorted but it came out a strangled sob. I understood what was happening.

"We should go back this New Year's," I managed to smile through my tears. We hadn't been back to the Suffolk coast in years, not since his health had declined and he could no longer stay comfortable in the dank house.

"Too cold," he grumbled and my heart broke. How could Ivo, the malamute, the Arctic son, find anything too cold? I remembered his withering glare when I proposed not venturing out of the station in Antarctica as the rest of the team had returned earlier with frostbite and inside the artificial climate was a balmy 7 degrees celsius and one needed only two sweaters to feel comfortable. Of course we went out...

"You'll miss building your snowman!" I warned, situating the covers around him.

"Do you remember - " he began distantly but then he looked at me and stopped, confused.

I knew he was remembering Danny. Something they had done together.

"Remember what?" I asked softly, desperate to keep him with me just a little longer.

"Nothing," he said, turning away to close his eyes. "Tired."

"Then get some sleep, little prince," I whispered, kissing his warm cheek.

0o0o0o0o0

He left me sometime during the two hours I sat and fidgeted with the mail and my daily to-do list. I became aware of it when his raspy breathing - the end product of smoking - came slower and slower and then I realized that I couldn't hear it at all. I glanced across at him and I knew. Well before I stood and walked to him, I knew.

He lay serenely, at peace for the first time in a long time, his pale features as perfect in life as in death. I spoke to him, bent to gently shake him. I checked his pulse.

I called 9-9-9 and sat down to wait, uncertain what to do, what to think. I had known for a long time it was coming. Death takes us all in the end. But even while his vibrancy was subdued by the physical pains of aging, I had imagined he would go out fighting. I couldn't see Ivo as the "not with a bang but a whimper" type. Automatically I recited, "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

I looked at him. How could this be? How could he leave me?

Yes, I am ashamed to admit that was my very next thought. I had been with Ivo for nearly half a century. What would I do now?

The house felt cold and empty and I walked out to the garden, grateful for the warm summer air that had once been the bane of Ivo's existence. So often we'd sat here, he and Martin and I. He'd given me my first kiss here, built his snowman, lectured me on astronomy.

I glanced at the sky. And that's when I saw it - that magnificent shimmering red ball hanging there, waiting. And then I realized, I knew why it was there. It was calling him, beckoning him to come, to play as only they knew how to play - the ferocity of their molten beings far too strange for this tame society. I imagined Ivo's blue eyes snapping ecstatically as he reached out for his true mother, to follow her home.

And still smiling as I cried, I whispered my goodbye and walked back into the house to wait for the ambulance.


End file.
